
T 



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CDEmiGHT DEPOSIT 



THE BUSINESS OF WAR 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



THE REBIRTH 

OF RUSSIA Cloth, Net, $1.25 

THE WAR AFTER 

THE WAR Cloth, Net, $1.2 5 

LEONARD WOOD: 

PROPHET OF PREPAREDNESS 

Cloth, Net, 75 cents 




Photograph by Paul Laib from a Painting, 



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THE BUSINESS 
OF WAR 



BY 

ISAAC F. MARCOSSON 

AUTHOR OF 

"THE REBIRTH OF RUSSIA," 

"THE WAR AFTER THE WAR," 

"LEONARD WOOD, PROPHET OF PREPAREDNESS," 

ETC 




WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS 
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 



NEWYORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
MCMXVIII 



n 



(K J 



Copyright, 1917-1918, by The Curtis Publishing Company 
Copyright, 1917, by The Ridgway Company 



Copyright, 1917, 
By JOHN LANE COMPANY 



APR 15 1918 



Press of 

J. J. Little & Ives Company 

New York, U. S. A. 



©GI.A494617 



TO 
THE BRITISH ARMIES EVERYWHERE 

BUT TO THOSE HEROIC LEGIONS IN FRANCE IN PARTICULAR 

THE AUTHOR DEDICATES 
THIS BOOK 
IN UNFORGETTABLE REMEMBRANCE OF THEIR 
COURAGE AND COMRADESHIP 



FOREWORD 



In the glamour of battle heroism the world loses 
sight of the mechanics of war. It is more thrilling 
to have an emotion about a forlorn trench hope led 
to victory than to hear about a supply column that 
reached the front under a storm of shells. Yet the 
courage of the teamsters who face death with only 
the reins in their hands is fit to rank with the 
valour of the fighting men armed with guns. 

War has become a business. It is the world's 
supreme task at this moment. "Business as usual" 
has gone into the scrap heap along with many 
other illusions that clogged effort and begot a costly 
optimism in the early days of the conflict. The 
one definite work of civilization is to win the war. 
The path to victory is through organization. 

No military establishment presents such a pic- 
ture of close-knit endeavour as the British Army. 
The immortal First Seven Divisions who dashed to 
the relief of Belgium and laid the first Anglo-Saxon 
sacrifice on the Altar of Freedom were the nucleus 
of the mighty host on which the sun never sets 
to-day. In less than three years Britain has created 
an institution out of cheerful service that has 



8 FOREWORD 



blocked the German machine that was forty years 
in brutal building. It is the precedent for our own 
gallant legions now in the making. 

No phase of the British Army is more complete 
in its system than Supply and Transport. By the 
natural circumstance which always subordinates the 
prosaic to the spectacular it is the least-known. Its 
heroes are unsung: its deeds are not often re- 
warded. Yet the Army Service Corps is the un- 
complaining beast of burden that carries on its back 
the wherewithal to live and fight. Its Victoria 
Cross is the consciousness of high and incessant 
devotion. 

In former experiences with the British Armies in 
France I have seen the Supply and Transport only 
as a necessary incident in the life and death struggle 
that raged from the Channel to the Somme. Lately 
however I made a special journey to study it at 
first hand. I have talked with its organizers and 
its doers: I have followed the food and equipment 
from the time it was contracted for until they 
reached the men in the firing line. 

In my work I have been one of the historians of 
so-called Big Business : in this war I have been with 
the five seasoned Allied Armies and also with the 
American Expeditionary Force in France. It is no 
deprecation of any of them to say that the British 
organization for the supply of its fighting men is 
in many respects the most amazing business insti- 
tution that I have yet seen. At a time when 



FOREWORD 



America is preparing to play her part in the su- 
preme drama an intimate revelation of British 
methods — the methods, it is well to remember, upon 
which the whole success of our cause depends — 
may be helpful to soldier and civilian alike. For 
no man can know them without realising the mag- 
nitude of the task that lies before our army abroad. 
Britain's way has been the scientific way. She 
has made the business of war the prelude to an 
orderly, efficient and constructive peace. The War 
has become an immense training school for The 
War After the War. 

I. F. M. 

New York, February, 191 8. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. War and Business . ...... 17 

II. Army Demand and Supply .... 45 

III. Feeding the Fighting Millions . . 68 

IV. From Ship to Trench 90 

V. The Miracle of Transport . . . . 121 

VI. The Motor Under Fire 150 

VII. The Salvage of Battle . . . . . 168 

VIII. The Army Food Drive 200 

IX. The Wares of War 216 

X. A Visit to Sir Douglas Haig . . . 229 

XI. England's War Efficiency Engineer 258 

XII. NORTHCLIFFE — INSURGENT 286 



tz 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Lieut. General Sir John S. Cowans, K.C.B . . Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

Andrew Weir 26 

Major General A. R. Crofton Atkins .... 32 

A Corner in a Supply Reserve Depot in England 60 

Major General E. E. Carter 72 

A Typical Scene on a Road in Northern France . 76 

Soldiers Drawing Rations at the Front ... 82 

Motor Lorries Laden with Food ..... 108 

Cooking Tommy's Food Under Fire . . . . 112 

Colonel C. M. Ryan and the Author . . . . 118 

Major General W. G. B. Boyce 126 

One of the Many Reminders that War is not all 
Waste 198 

A Forest of Shells 222 

Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig 230 

Sir Eric Geddes 258 

The Viscount Northcliffe 286 



13 



THE BUSINESS OF WAR 



I— War and Business 



ABROAD-SHOULDERED, deep-chested man, 
with keen blue eyes and an unyielding jaw, 
the breast of his khaki tunic ablaze with 
service and order ribbons, sits at a flat-topped 
desk in the War Office in London with his finger 
on the pulse of the most remarkable business ma- 
chine in the world. Before him each morning is 
laid a sheet of paper less than a foot square on 
which is typed the feeding strength of all the Brit- 
ish Armies — man and beast — in every theatre of 
war together with the precise quantity of food, fuel 
and forage available for them. On another sheet 
is a compact summary of all supplies contracted for 
or speeding on ships and trains towards the zones of 
distribution and consumption. At a glance there- 
fore he can appraise the situation on which victory 
in the field stands or falls. 

Although aloof from combat this man controls 
^he arteries through which pulses the very life blood 
of war, for he is Lieutenant General Sir John S. 
Cowans, K. C. B., Quartermaster General to all his 
Britannic Majesty's Forces. He feeds, clothes and 
supplies a khakied host equal to the population of 
Greater New York ; under his command are enough 
horses and mules to operate all the farms in Iowa. 
He renews and keeps going a fleet of mechanical 

17 



i8 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

transport that would duplicate more than one-sixth 
of all the commercial motor vehicles in use in the 
United States. In a word, he is Managing Director 
of one vast branch of the stupendous Business of 
War. 

There are dozens of British Generals better 
known to the average man in England than General 
Cowans, but none, not even Field Marshal Sir 
Douglas Haig himself, has a more important task. 
Without the "Q. M. G." — as the Quartermaster 
General is commonly known — there would be no big 
offensives in Flanders, Egypt or Mesopotamia — in- 
deed, no advance anywhere along the bristling Brit- 
ish battle line that stretches from the English Chan- 
nel to the shores of the Mediterranean. His work 
is the work preservative of war. About it is no 
glamor of spectacular performance; no thrill of 
battle heroism. It unfolds no panorama of grim 
and glorious deed. But it furnishes the real fuel 
of war; it stokes the mighty human furnace that 
forges the Hammer of the Hun. 

Unsung and often unrewarded by the honours 
that go to troops of the line, the Army Service 
Corps, which mans the legions of Supply and Trans- 
port, can fight as well as feed. It takes a higher cour- 
age to drive a motor truck where shells are falling 
than to operate a machine gun under fire. The 
record of the Army behind the Army is a continu- 
ous narrative of unflinching bravery shot through 
with a valour that is full brother to the efficiency of 



WAR AND BUSINESS 19 

the Corps. A squadron of motor trucks laden with 
food charged and routed a troop of German Uhlans 
in the retreat from Mons; at the first battle of 
Ypres cooks, orderlies, farriers, chauffeurs and 
even battalion clerks swelled the long thin line of 
heroes that checked the Kaiser's march to the sea. 

There has never been a day since the immortal 
First Seven Divisions dashed to the relief of Bel- 
gium that Thomas Atkins has missed a day's ra- 
tions. He has had them served hot and plentiful 
amid all the stress and storm of flying death. Day 
and night, up and down the hell-swept roads and 
regardless of the terrors that lurked in land and 
sky, the food has always come up. No matter how 
the tides of battle ebb or flow, man and beast must 
be fed. Break the lines of food communication and 
all is lost. 

But this immense operation is not without a ro- 
mance all its own. The endless chain of army sup- 
ply, geared as it is to the most incessant and un- 
failing of all demands — the appetite — has annexed 
the whole world of output. It reaches to the waving 
wheat domain of the Argentine, to the fleecy cotton 
belt of our own South, to the rolling oat realm of 
Canada, to the dripping oil fields of Burmah, Mex- 
ico and California. Into its hungry channels flow 
the products of the vats and tanks of Chicago's 
Packingtown; the benches and mills of New Eng- 
land; the canneries of Australia. All lands and all 
flocks are stripped for its needs. It has recruited 



20 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

a host of workers as huge as the battling armies 
it sustains, to the insatiate end that the Wheels of 
War be kept whirling. 

While it involves millions of men, requires an 
expenditure of billions of dollars, taps the entire 
universe and provides a continuous procession of 
supplies, it is dominated by one man who can sit at 
a desk in a far-away office, the absolute centralisa- 
tion of the whole ramified activity. How is it pos- 
sible when the seven seas have become the grave- 
yards of transport; when human life is as a candle 
in the wind; when half of mankind is bent upon 
destruction ? 

The answer is easy. It all results from the fact 
that the Business of War as represented by the Sup- 
ply and Transport of the British armies is noth- 
ing more or less than a colossal piece of merchan- 
dising that has become a triumph or standardisa- 
tion. What scientific efficiency experts have 
preached to American factory owners for applica- 
tion to the arts and crafts of peaceful pursuit has 
here reached the last degree of practical interpreta- 
tion for the maintenance of the War of Wars. It 
expresses the genius of organisation of a hundred' 
United States Steel Corporations, Standard Oil 
Companies and International Harvester Companies 
rolled into one. It is a super corporation, knit by 
iron discipline, fed by fire and driven by an energy 
that would kindle and keep an Empire. Apply it to 



WAR AND BUSINESS 21 

a purely commercial enterprise and it would yield 
a well-nigh fabulous profit. 

Yet the men who operate it are in the main soldiers 
who grub at prosaic desks, battling each day with 
questions of raw materials, overhead costs, produc- 
tion, transportation and distribution. Although un- 
limited financial credit is behind them they must ac- 
count for every dollar they spend. In providing 
for the battlefields of war they parallel nearly every 
problem of the battlefields of business. War, as 
waged to-day, is merely bitter and bloody competi- 
tion between nations. In the operations of an army 
in the field you have, for example, the working out, 
with men and guns, of the most difficult and costly 
of all industrial items — Distribution. So, too, with 
Supply and Transport, which is just another kind 
of Distribution made possible by invoking every 
rule of the business game. 

Study the system and you will find the whole 
armament of scientific trade war-fare. You will 
encounter charts and diagrams of office and staff 
organisation that will apply to any money-making 
establishment regardless of output. In the "f ollow- 
up" of army supplies you will see that every tin of 
jam is traced to the ultimate fighting consumer. 
You will discover processes of economy that "turn 
over" John Bull's taxes half a dozen times although 
originally intended for a single outlay. You will 
meet with battle salvage that redeems the debris of 
war ranging from the nails in a timber trench sup- 



22 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

port to a twelve-inch gun. Under this drive for war 
commodities new industries have been created and 
old ones revived. A gigantic mechanism has been 
set in motion that, while dedicated to war, is pav- 
ing the way for a more efficient, a more orderly 
and a more economical peace. 

Victory in the war may or may not lie in the 
kitchen, but no one can deny that it is very likely 
to perch on the banners of the best- fed armies. 
From Darius to Napoleon the empty stomach has 
been first aid to defeat. "Many can lead troops; I 
can feed them," was one of Wellington's proudest 
boasts. 

It was a hard job to feed soldiers when they were 
numbered by tens of thousands ; it is infinitely more 
difficult now that they are reckoned in units of 
millions. There was a time when invading armies 
lived on the lands they occupied. Fancy the fate 
of Haig's hosts if they tried to subsist upon Flan- 
ders and Northern France! But War, like Life, is 
a constant evolution. Hence the transition from 
plunder to preparedness; from the era of grafting 
sutler and unscrupulous army contractor to the 
present day procedure that has made a perfect art 
of the commissariat. 

Clearly to understand the system of Supply and 
Transport ("S. and T." as they call it in the army), 
you must first get the active army organisation 
fixed in your mind. There are two grand divisions. 
One is Operations, which has solely to do with 



WAR AND BUSINESS 23 

strategy and fighting. It is controlled by the Im- 
perial Staff, whose Chief is General Sir William 
Robertson. Its tools are men and guns. 

The other is Administration, which is charged 
with the task of keeping these men, their guns and 
their transport fed, fueled and equipped. At the 
head is the Quartermaster General. He not only 
provides what the men and horses eat but purveys 
the whole mechanical transport. He likewise fur- 
nishes all the wood, coal, disinfectants and medical 
comforts needed by the armies. 

There are two kinds of supplies — essential arti- 
cles, like tinned and preserved meat, bread, biscuits, 
flour, jam, tea, sugar, butter, bacon and condensed 
milk and non-essentials like fresh meat and veg- 
etables. 

The number of supply items for the British army 
has grown to an almost incredible extent. In the 
Crimean War only three articles — flour, meat and 
vegetables — were issued to the troops. In the Boer 
War there was an increase to forty-five. To-day 
the Quartermaster General has exactly four hun- 
dred and fifty on his list! 

If the Quartermaster General's work was con- 
fined to subsistence and fuel for man, beast and 
vehicle his labours would be comparatively easy. 
But linked with his task is the sponsorship of what 
is termed Ordnance and Equipment Stores. To the 
ordinary mind the word Ordnance simply means 
guns of all kinds. As a matter of fact in the Brit- 



24 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

ish Army the phrase Ordnance Stores covers nearly 
eight thousand items ranging from an axe to a mess 
tent that will shelter a circus. The principal stores, 
however, are camp equipment, clothing, shoes, un- 
derwear, blankets, shirts, harness, saddlery, trench 
tools, oils, paints, chemicals, iron mongery, furni- 
ture of all kinds, huts and the materials for the re- 
pair of all these articles. 

Still a third detail of Administration deals with 
the question of Remounts, which means the renewal 
of horses. Both Ordnance Stores and Remounts 
have their own Directors, who work in conjunction 
with the Quartermaster General. The only impor- 
tant equipment used by armies not supplied by the 
Quartermaster General is arms of all description, 
guns and gun carriages, vehicles, telegraph and tel- 
ephone stores and ammunition, which are all pro- 
vided by the Master General of Ordnance, whose 
chief source of supply is the Ministry of Munitions. 

The big difference between food supplies and 
ordnance stores is that one can wait and the other 
cannot. Guns, for instance, do not have to be fed 
regularly, but soldiers and horses cannot go a day 
without sustenance. Hence the Supply machine can 
brook no delays or breakdown. Interruption spells 
disaster. 

Here then is the situation. Roughly speaking, five 
millions of British soldiers are training at home or 
fighting or being held in reserve in France, Meso- 
potamia, Egypt, Salonika or Africa. They must 



WAR AND BUSINESS 25 

have three meals and their tea every day; their 
clothes, boots, underwear and equipment must be 
kept in good order and renewed at regular intervals ; 
their horses, mules and motor cars must also have 
the wherewithal to live or to be used. In short, the 
British army must be maintained as a going and 
effective concern. 

Some of these troops are five thousand miles 
from the original source of their supplies; nearly 
all their food and commodities must run the gaunt- 
let of the seven seas, where hides the deadly peril of 
the submarine. Besides, immense details of troops 
are being constantly shifted from place to place; in 
some quarters ranks are thinned; in others they are 
steadily and sometimes suddenly increased. How 
then is the vast task of supplying them achieved ? 

Let us begin at the beginning. You cannot dis- 
tribute food and materials for these far-flung mil- 
lions without assembling at first. Furthermore, you 
cannot mobilise supplies without knowing what and 
how much you want. Hence the cornerstone of the 
immense structure that we are about to explore is 
really need as expressed by the army contract. 

Formerly all British Army contracts were made 
by the Director of Army Contracts at the War 
Office. He was a Civil Servant and, therefore, not 
a soldier. As the armies swelled from hundreds of 
thousands to millions and as the enormous demands 
for food and supplies began to test and tax the 
sources of raw and finished materials it became ap- 



26 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

parent that only trained and seasoned business ex- 
perience could successfully cope with a situation 
that threatened to be acute and costly. 

Early in 1917 the whole scheme of War Office 
Contracts, which means the provision for all the 
British Armies, was placed in the hands of Mr. 
Andrew Weir, a civilian. He is a hard-headed, 
large-visioned, self-made Scotchman, a shipping 
prince whose boats are known in nearly every port 
and whose name is almost as familiar in New York 
as it is in London. The ancient title of Surveyor 
General of Supply was revived for him. 

Mr. Weir is a member of the Army Council com- 
posed of the Chief of the Imperial Staff, the Quar- 
termaster General, the Adjutant General, the Mas- 
ter General of Ordnance, the Director General of 
Military Aeronautics, the Director General of 
Movements and Railways and a Financial Secre- 
tary. This Council runs the war so far as the 
British end of it is concerned. At the head of it 
is the Secretary of State for War — the post that 
Lord Kitchener held at the time of his death — which 
corresponds to the Secretary of War in our Cabi- 
net, but with larger powers. 

We can now proceed to translate the whole sys- 
tem of Supply and Transport into the simple terms 
of trade. The Surveyor General of Supply is the 
Producer; the Quartermaster General is the Distrib- 
utor; the Army is the Consumer. The only differ- 
ence between this business and a regular business 




ANDREW WEIR 
Surveyor General of Supply 



WAR AND BUSINESS 27 

pursued for profit is that with the former no selling 
campaign is required. All the output is sold before 
it is produced. 

Being a business man, Mr. Weir looked upon his 
new work in the light of an industrial enterprise. 
He immediately organised it just as if he were going 
into the business of war supply for the rest of his 
life. He knew nothing about war but he assumed 
(and not without truth) that the principles that had 
made him a successful man of commercial affairs 
would apply to any other undertaking. With the 
organisation of the department of army contracts 
you strike the first line of scientific defence that ap- 
proved trade methods have reared about the sub- 
sistence of the British armies. 

To the everlasting credit of the British soldier 
let it be said that he welcomed the innovation. The 
old enmity between regular and civilian was at once 
wiped out. The soldier realised that this war has 
become the biggest business of all time. Contact 
with live business brains and elastic business 
experience has stimulated his imagination and de- 
veloped his initiative. The old-time administrative 
soldier was the slave of red tape; all his thinking 
was done for him; everything was by precedent. 
The men of the Quartermaster General's Depart- 
ment under this new association will be masters of 
trade technique, equipped to run any business job 
when the war is over. 

When you go into the office of the Surveyor Gen- 



28 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

eral of Supply you think you are in the board room 
of a great corporation. On the walls, for example, 
hang the diagrams so familiar to American indus- 
trial establishments. Unfolded on a table is the 
master chart that tells the whole story of army sup- 
ply from the contract end. 

At the apex of what we in the United States call 
the pyramid of organisation is the Surveyor Gen- 
eral of Supply, who corresponds to the President 
and General Manager. Next in rank comes the 
Advisory Board, consisting of the Quartermaster 
General or a representative; the Master General of 
Ordnance or a representative, the Finance Member 
(The Watchdog of the British Treasury) or a rep- 
resentative, and three civilians who are Lord Pirrie, 
Chairman of Harland & Wolff, the famous ship- 
builders, and one of the largest employers of labour 
in England ; F. Dudley Docker, the George Pullman 
of England, and builder of the first "tanks," and 
P. H. McClelland, a shipping wizard and all around 
man of business. The Assistant Surveyor General 
of Supply — Mr. Austin Harris — another captain of 
capital — is an ex-officio member. This Board, I 
might add, sits every day on the business at hand 
just like the board of directors of the Standard Oil 
Company convenes every morning. It knows pre- 
cisely what is going on all the time. 

These civilians emphasise one of the most sig- 
nificant phases of the whole supply contract scheme. 
It lies in the fact that in every domain that spends 



WAR AND BUSINESS 29 

■ ' ' ■■■ m iii 1 — ——————— — — — i — ■ w— — — 1 — —— ■ —fc 

money for the army you find what Mr. Weir calls 
"commercial members, ,, men recruited without pay 
from the business world, who pass on the economic 
and financial merits of all propositions. In this ar- 
rangement is one of the many valuable lessons that 
our new and growing military establishment may 
learn from the British. 

The work of the Surveyor General of Supply is 
divided into three main branches — Demands, Con- 
tracts and Administration. Since the word Demand 
will appear frequently in this chapter and others to 
follow it may be well to explain just what it means. 
A Demand is the itemised statement in terms of 
pounds, cases, tins, gallons, garments or bushels of * 
an army's needs. It may be a single typewritten 
sheet or forty sheets. In the case of ordnance stores 
for a unit like a battalion, battery or a brigade, the 
list is printed in book form and called a Mobilisa- 
tion Unit Table. The demand is made up in the 
field by the Director of Supply and Transport at^ 
tached to each army. There are five complete Brit- 
ish armies comprising the Expeditionary Force in 
France. He knows just how many men and animals 
he must feed; how many trucks, cars and motor 
cycles he must supply with petrol and spare parts. 
Since forces are being shifted and changed con- 
stantly a new Demand is made up each month. The 
demand becomes the Food and Supply Budget — a 
definite thing to do business for and with. 

You get some idea of the scope of British Army 



30 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Supply provision when I say that since the begin- 
ning of the war the value of purchases made by 
the contracts branch alone has aggregated $3,750,- 
000,000; that the annual gross outlay now is some- 
thing like $1,750,000,000, and this does not include 
guns, ammunition, aeroplanes or mechanical trans- 
port. 

Among the purchases during the war have been 
105,000,000 yards of cloth, 115,000,000 yards of 
flannel, 400,000,000 pounds of bacon, 500,000,000 
rations of preserved meat, 260,000,000 tins of jam, 
167,000,000 pounds of cheese, 35,000,000 knives, 
forks and spoons; 35,000,000 pairs of boots, 
40,000,000 horse shoes and 25,000,000 gas helmets. 

Looking at this enormous outlay from another 
angle the British armies in France alone each month 
require 95,000 tons of oats, 4,000,000 gallons of 
gasolene, 20,000 tons of flour, 10,000,000 pounds 
of jam and 75,000 tons of hay. Ponder on these 
figures and you begin to think that Demands are 
written on ten league canvasses with brushes of 
comet's hair ! 

Having seen what a Demand is we can proceed 
with the specific job of the Surveyor General of 
Supply, which is to see that contracts are let for the 
items set forth. This brings us to the Demands 
and Contracts Divisions. 

Let us take Demands first. They are divided into 
five sections — Stores, which comprise all engineer- 
ing equipment, timber and hardware; Supplies, 



WAR AND BUSINESS 31 

which embrace all food and fuel; Works Supplies, 
such as building and trench material ; Clothing, and 
Medical Stores. 

Each one of these Demands branches has a Sup- 
ply Committee, which includes a Commercial Mem- 
ber (the inevitable link with business), a representa- 
tive of the Quartermaster General's Department 
concerned with this specific article (it may be food 
or clothing), and who is known as the Demanding 
Officer, and a representative of the Director of 
Army Contracts. The post of Director of Army 
Contracts survives, but it is subordinate to the Sur- 
veyor General of Supply. Thus the Supply Com- 
mittee becomes a miniature organisation of experts 
which concentrates upon one group of supplies. 

Since we have reached the liaison (as the army 
phrase goes) between the Quartermaster General's 
Department and the Surveyor General of Supply it 
is important that you know just how this former 
organisation is constituted. Henceforth, and until 
the food and supplies reach Tommy in the trenches 
you will find some member of the force in evidence. 

You have seen how the Quartermaster General, 
Sir John Cowans, sits in his office at the War Office 
head of the whole distributing machine and know- 
ing every hour just what the British troops want 
and what they have. Under him are two separate 
units. One is that part of his organisation that 
works at desks in the War Office and throughout 
England, America and wherever the British army 



32 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

buys or makes supplies ; the other is an exact replica 
in the field from Quartermaster General down. 
There is a complete organisation in France and 
smaller ones in every other theatre of war. For 
the purposes of this book we are concerned with 
the contingent in England. 

The Quartermaster General to all the forces is 
really the Andrew Carnegie of the supply corpora- 
tion. Like Carnegie, he has the ability to select and 
keep capable associates and subordinates. First 
down the line (and in the office next to him) is the 
Director of Supply and Transport, Major General 
A. R. Crofton Atkins ("Tommy Atkins" is what his 
colleagues call him) — titular head of the Army Ser- 
vice Corps and a many-sided individual, who com- 
bines the authority of the solider with a rare genius 
or organisation. If he had gone into trade in Eng- 
land he would have been another Lever or Lipton; 
in America Marshall Field and John Wanamaker 
would have been his rivals. 

Under him the British supply machine, built to 
meet the needs of 168,000 men (the old regular 
army), has stood the strain of every demand that 
this war has made, which means that it has pro- 
vided for five millions. It is still going strong. In 
General Atkins' office is a chart which sets forth in 
pyramid fashion the work of every branch of the 
Quartermaster General's Department. The small- 
est abattoir in the department of meat supply is 
fixed on it. 




From a Copyrighted Portrait by Percival Anderson. 

MAJOR GENERAL A. R. CROFTON ATKINS 
Director of Supply and Transport at the War Office 



WAR AND BUSINESS 33 

Every branch has a number and an executive 
head. Take Food Supplies. It is technically known 
as "Q.M.G. 6," and is headed by an Assistant 
Director of Supplies, Colonel H. F. P. Percival, 
who has his own staff. Each branch, in turn, has 
various subdivisions indicated by letters such as 
"Q.M.G. 6 A," which has to do with the organisa- 
tion of Base and Main Depots; fixing reserves of 
food to be held in the field ; provision of meat stuffs, 
military butcheries, cold storage and refrigerators; 
supply accounting and relations with the Food Min- 
istry. 

"Q.M.G. 6 B" deals, among many other things, 
with one of the most difficult of all problems, gaso- 
lene; "Q.M.G. 6 C" with co-ordination of all de- 
mands from the field and all questions affecting the 
shipment of supplies (the allocation of tonnage is 
an immense problem), and so on. I merely cite 
these typical duties to show the immense scope of 
the department. There are eleven of these num- 
bered branches, each with many subdivisions, yet all 
are joined by a team-work that is one of the won- 
ders of the organisation. None of the activities 
clash. Each unit has its rigidly defined task. Linked 
together they make a marvellous machine. 

By this procedure you can understand how easy 
it is for the Surveyor General of Supply to have a 
competent Demanding Officer from let us say 
"Q.M.G. 6" on the Supply Committee which deals 
with Food Supplies. In this concrete case the De- 



34 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

manding Officer is the one who receives the 
Monthly Demand from the Director of Supply with 
the overseas armies. 

Now we can go into the matter of Contracts. The 
Demands Division has already made known the 
needs of the armies. For staple supplies like jam, 
tinned meats, biscuits, flour, sugar and potatoes, 
which can be bought in big bulk, and for articles 
to be manufactured, the Surveyor General of Sup- 
ply must get the Demand three months ahead so as 
to enable him to place orders in America, Australia 
and Canada. 

In order to co-ordinate the work between De- 
mands and Contracts Branches there is a commit- 
tee in the Contracts Department to correspond with 
every Supply Committee in the Demands Section. 
Likewise there is a General Supply Contracts Board 
headed by the Assistant Surveyor General of 
Supply. 

It is in the Contracts Branch that you find the 
commercial domination of war supply at its height. 
In the economies effected, the controls established, 
the mobilisation of materials achieved, you get the 
full dramatisation of business efficiency. Under its 
constructive influence the army contract as created 
by this war has been purged and sterilised. Instead 
of a juicy plum to be plucked by the despoilers of 
the people's money it has become a definite business- 
like document safeguarded and supervised at every 
turn. 



WAR AND BUSINESS 35 



In normal times Government purchase in Eng- 
land is by public competitive offering. Where the 
needs of the Army form a relatively small part of 
the available production of the country and where, 
as a result, there is effective and healthy competi- 
tion, this method is the best means to secure satis- 
factory supplies at reasonable prices. 

The tremendous demands of this war upset all 
these conditions. The resources of many trades 
and industries began to be taxed. The gouging of 
the Government began. But John Bull did not long 
stand for this sort of thing. As early as June, 19 15, 
when the industries began to feel the strain of the 
unprecedented production, the system was inaugu- 
rated of requiring contractors to justify their quota- 
tions of price by the submission of costs, or what 
the English call costings. It limited profits to a 
reasonable degree and wiped out the effect of the 
artificial market conditions produced by the abnor- 
mal military demands. 

But this procedure had no statutory authority. It 
was purely a matter of negotiation with individual 
contractors and trade associations. As the armies 
grew and the difficulties of supply increased these 
more or less amiable methods were found to be in- 
effective. 

John Jones, the manufacturer, capitalised his ad- 
vantage and exacted his pound of flesh. Rotund 
as he is, John Bull declined to stand for the extor- 
tion. Fangs were put into the Defense of the Realm 



36 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Acts with the result that a firm's output could be 
requisitioned by the Government and a price fixed 
on a basis cost of production plus a reasonable 
profit on a pre-war standard. These powers have 
been widely used both by the War Office and the 
Admiralty. The mere fact that they exist is a bul- 
wark to the public purse. 

Here is the way it works. Let us assume that 
the War Office through the Surveyor General of 
Supply gets a bid for overcoats at $10 a piece. "All 
right," says the Supply Board, "we will accept that 
bid subject to costings." Accountants are imme- 
diately set to work upon the contractor's books. If 
it is found that the price is excessive the factory is 
commandeered and run by the government. This 
whiphand over extortion has had the effect of re- 
ducing the prices of all war commodities. 

The system in vogue for keeping a check on the 
contractor is very simple. A staff of skilled inves- 
tigators visits the plant and checks the details of 
material used from the actual invoices; of labour 
employed from the wage books; of overhead 
charges from the trading and profit and loss ac- 
counts and of profits from the pre-war rate, the 
present turnover and the amount of capital em- 
ployed. Thus there is no way for the contractor to 
escape absolute and complete scrutiny and censor- 
ship. 

The savings effected in the purchase of Miscel- 
laneous Stores (hardware, horse shoes, brushes and 



WAR AND BUSINESS 37 

similar articles) will show the beneficent effects of 
the system. During the twelve months ending 
April 30 last the cost of contracts for these stores 
was $42,500,000. These costs were investigated 
under the Defense of the Realm Acts and reduc- 
tions to the value of $2,000,000 made. On the first 
five million dollars the reduction was 9 per cent; 
on the last it was only 2 per cent, which shows that 
the era of extravagant and padded quotations is 
over. It is only one result of the business adminis- 
tration. War is indeed on a business basis. 

But this enormous saving which applies to prac- 
tically every commodity is merely one phase of the 
larger rehabilitation of the whole matter of army 
supply. As the demands of the armies increased it 
was found necessary to regulate production in all 
stages of manufacture down to the raw materials. 
Under the Surveyor General of Supply a Director 
of Raw Materials was appointed in A. H. Gold- 
finch, a manufacturer of wide and seasoned experi- 
ence. The Material is either purchased by the Gov- 
ernment or the transactions in it are controlled 
under the Defense of the Realm regulations. The 
conversion into the finished article is made on a 
basis of fixed price for each process of manufac- 
ture. The chief raw materials controlled now are 
wool, jute, leather, flax, hemp and semi-finished 
steel. 

It was impossible to carry out such regulation 
without the aid of experts in the various industries 



38 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

affected. A whole new branch composed of trained 
buyers and manufacturers had to be established. 
For the provision of clothing and including the pur- 
chase of the raw material, not less than one hun- 
dred technical officers are employed. Most of them 
are civilians who are given commissions and des- 
ignated as "temporary officers" — who enter the ser- 
vice for the duration of the war. This same plan 
has been followed in connection with leather, jute 
and flax. 

This all-important branch of army supply has a 
significance that reaches far into the future and is 
not without its portent for America. The more 
you see of it the more you realise that this is a war 
of raw materials of all kinds. So will be the War 
after the War. Germany will only succumb when 
she faces the exhaustion of the materials with 
which to wage the struggle. Upon it likewise 
depends her industrial revival or impotency. 

England's organised control of raw materials not 
only strengthens her weapons of actual physical of- 
fence, but girds her up for the grilling days of 
peace, when bitter and bloodless trade competition 
will have full sway and when Raw Material will 
be King. But this is a look ahead. Let us see in 
the concrete terms of war economies what the con- 
trol of materials has brought about. 

Take Wool. The world shortage was first felt 
early in 191 6, and England immediately took steps 
to protect herself against excessive prices and to 



WAR AND BUSINESS 39 

insure an adequate supply for her military purposes. 
First of all she bought the entire home clip for 
$32,500,000. The purchase was made by expert 
wool buyers. The prices were fixed at 35 per cent 
above those obtaining in June and July, 19 14. High 
as this was it was considerably lower than the 
market quotations at the time of the purchase. 

As army demands, together with neutral and 
American demands increased, the whole Australian 
and New Zealand clips were bought for $175,000,- 
000, which was ten per cent lower than the pre- 
vailing price. The effect of these two operations 
was to concentrate in the hands of the British gov- 
ernment the bulk of the wool supplies of the Em- 
pire. 

To economise transport, the raw wool is shipped 
direct to the manufacturer. The various agencies 
concerned in the processes by which it is converted 
into the finished product are compensated at a price 
based on cost of production plus a reasonable profit. 
In this work you get a gratifying example of co- 
operation because farmers, manufacturers and trade 
union officials are called in to assist in the operation 
of the scheme. The wool which is not required by 
the Government for War purposes is sold at mar- 
ket prices. Preference is given to the needs of the 
British export trade for the purpose of maintaining 
the foreign exchanges and the prices are kept as 
stable as possible. 

The control of British and Colonial wool has re- 



40 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

suited in immense economies for the State. The 
effect of war conditions upon market prices of the 
raw material has been greatly minimised, even elim- 
inated, while the fixed price of the raw material 
has enabled the War Office to control the cost of 
production at every stage. In actual money it has 
meant a saving to the Government of $65,000,000. 

Take leather. The army needs, as may be sup- 
posed, are enormous. Boots, harness, saddlery and 
leather equipment for the horses and belting for 
factories are required in huge quantities. During 
nine months in 191 5 the Government bill for these 
supplies was $75,000,000. This tremendous de- 
mand sent prices soaring, owing to the competition 
between manufacturers for the raw material. So 
John Bull got busy with another control. A sta- 
tistical survey of the tanning trade was made and 
the visible supply of leather commandeered. Ex- 
ports of leather were forbidden and tanners were 
assisted to make purchases in South America. The 
fangs of the Defense of the Realm Acts were put 
into the whole business, which at once came under 
military direction. 

The technical and trade experts attached to the 
Contracts Branch were given full play for their 
talents and the whole leather industry took on a new 
scope and life. Among other things kips for leather 
uppers were bought in large quantities from India. 
This operation became invested with a peculiar in- 
terest because the trade was largely in German 



WAR AND BUSINESS 41 

hands before the war. The price of leather pro- 
duced from these kips is about 24 cents a foot, 
while that of the corresponding leather from Brit- 
ish hides is 42 cents a foot. This whole control 
of leather has not only enabled Britain to supply 
her war needs, but to provide for some of the re- 
quirements of her Allies. She made 7,000,000 pairs 
of boots for the Russian army. It is estimated that 
the saving to the War Office has approximated not 
less than $15,000,000. This is exclusive of the 
saving in the purchase of the Indian kips, where 
the economies are about $6,000,000. 

So, too, with jute, flax and hemp. The necessity 
for control in these commodities was caused by the 
immense quantities required by the army for sand- 
bags and other jute bags, sacking, tent linen, general 
equipment, aeroplane cloth and rope. The Govern- 
ment prohibited all importation of raw jute and 
then requisitioned all unsold raw material in the 
country. This was followed by an equitable distri- 
bution of the supply among the spinners at a fixed 
price. 

With flax a whole new agricultural activity was 
set in motion. Private import was prohibited and 
large quantities of flax seed were imported and 
sowed in the North of Ireland. The production of 
seed in Ireland, Canada and India was encouraged. 
It is an evidence of the growing desire of Great 
Britain to be self-sufficient during and after the 
war. As in the cases of wool and leather, huge 



42 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

savings have been brought about. The control of 
jute manufacture alone has saved the British gov- 
ernment $30,000,000. In hemp the margin of 
profit for shippers has been reduced from $175 to 
$125 a ton. The estimated annual turnover on 
70,000 tons has produced a combined profit and 
saving of $5,850,000. 

The temptation is strong to linger over more of 
these war economies for the reasons that they have 
such enormous meaning for America and her part 
in the war. The case of barbed wire is one in point. 
Only those people who have seen this war know 
that it is a war of wire. Northern France and 
Flanders are grim and rusty forests of barbed en- 
tanglement. 

In 19 1 5, when the war was getting into its stride, 
the British output of barbed wire had fallen to 
250 tons a week. The army requirements were 
four times that much. Barbed wire is produced 
from wire rods. Before the war most of this was 
secured from Germany and Belgium. The German 
product was the cheapest because it was a subsidised 
industry. This supply was automatically cut off 
by the war. The only source left was America and 
the price and freight on her output rose skyward. 

England thereupon set out to develop her wire 
rod production. Steel billets were provided by the 
Ministry of Munitions, which controls all the avail- 
able steel and the furnaces began to roar. Before 
long the output had grown from 250 tons a week 



WAR AND BUSINESS 43 

to 950. The Government reserves the entire output 
and allocates the rods among the various wire 
makers according to their requirements. Not only 
is the whole industry reorganised, but the usual 
big saving, due to control, has been effected. 
Where wire rods cost $150 a ton in the open mar- 
ket the Government produces them at about §72 
a ton. 

With tea — one of the mainstays of British life 
and a strong support of the Tommy — a tremendous 
economy has been effected by cutting out the mid- 
dleman and transmitting the raw material direct 
from producer to consumer. Formerly the tea was 
brought where it lay and collected by army trans- 
port for delivery to a bonded warehouse for blend- 
ing and packing. It was then sent to the home 
supply depots or direct to France. This was costly 
and complicated. 

The tea is now bought f . o. b. Calcutta and other 
places and sent without blending on Admiralty 
ships straight to the depots or to France in the orig- 
inal package. There is a big saving both in price 
and in shipping, handling and warehousing. The 
price paid under the old system varied from 20 to 
22 cents a pound; under the new arrangement it 
can be laid down for 18 cents a pound. Consid- 
ering that England is buying a total of 60,000,000 
pounds of tea this year you can see that it is a con- 
siderable item. 

One more commodity — jam — will serve to show 



44 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

still another phase of the British war supply econ- 
omy. Until recently the jam was bought by com- 
petitive bids. Now it is purchased under very 
unique auspices. Eight of the leading jam manu- 
facturers have been formed into a Government 
Committee which buys all the fruit necessary for 
the government supply. This prevents competition 
and a consequent increase in price. The firms are 
then paid for the actual cost of the fruit and sugar 
used; for the actual cost of delivery of the fruit 
and sugar to their works and of the finished jam 
to the military depots and for the actual cost of 
time and cases, plus 5 per cent profit if the manu- 
facturers make their own cases. A fixed rate has 
been established for each 100 pounds. It is based 
on previous profits and all manufacturers have been 
required to produce their books extending back 
three years before the war. Not only is jam cheaper 
but it is greatly improved in quality. 

I have cited these examples of supply saving to 
show that the conduct of the Business of War is as 
efficient and economical as any enterprise conduct- 
ed for profit. What is equally important this 
control procedure points the way to a post-war 
industrial regeneration that will make the British 
Empire a formidable world trade factor. 



II — Army Demand and Supply 

THE whole procession of army supply be- 
gins and ends with a contract. How is it 
made? Consult a chart in the office of the 
Surveyor General of Supply and you can see the 
consecutive process from the time the Demand 
comes in from the War Area (the field), or the 
Home and other Stations until the goods are actual- 
ly delivered to the supply depot or the army units. 

Every tender (or bid as it is known in America) 
invited (and exactly 204,985 were asked for dur- 
ing the last fiscal year) is on a form specially pre- 
pared by the War Office. The specification, be it 
for meat cleaver or hospital tent, is carefully drawn, 
duplicated by the hundred, and sent with the blank 
tender form to the bidder. 

At this point you naturally ask : How is the Con- 
tracts Branch to put its finger at once on avail- 
able bidders? Go to Imperial House in Tothill 
Street, in London, and you will find out. In this 
immense establishment which houses the thousands 
of clerks of the Contracts Department you will 
discover a card index containing the names of 
70,000 manufacturers or dealers. These firms are 
in every neutral or allied country, but mainly in 
Great Britain, Canada, America and Australia. 
They can produce anything that the British armies 

45 



46 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

want. When the armies cannot get what they want 
from some outside concern they make it. on their 
own. 

If, for example, bids for biscuits are desired, you 
simply turn to the cards marked "Biscuits." On 
them you will find the names of every available bis- 
cuit-producing establishment in Great Britain and 
the United States. More than this you will find a 
record of every contract that the firm has had with 
the British government ; the date and the price. 

Hence all that is necessary is to send blank tenders 
with specifications or samples to every biscuit firm 
on the list. In order to get the widest competition 
and to encourage all British firms to compete for 
army contracts, samples and specifications are some- 
times sent to Boards of Trade with a view of in- 
teresting their members. 

All bids are opened by a Tender Board consist- 
ing of the Director of Army Contracts, a repre- 
sentative of the Financial Department and a rep- 
resentative of the Quartermaster General. If it is 
a matter of food the latter will be Q.M.G. 6. 

Once the contract is made it is followed through 
every process of manufacture. It is under constant 
scrutiny from inspectors and "speeders up." If a 
contractor lags behind in his order or defaults the 
Government buys the article contracted for else- 
where and charges it up to the delinquent one. 

Every contract goes to the Finance Bureau. Not 
a penny is paid out until actual delivery is certified. 



ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 47 

A check is then sent by the Treasury and the trans- 
action, so far as the Surveyor General of Supply 
is concerned, is ended. 

You will readily understand that thousands of 
contracts are made every week. How then can the 
Surveyor General keep tab on all of them? It is 
only through an organised checking system that he 
can find out how much money he is spending for 
the Government. Come with me once more into 
Mr. Weir's office and I will show you how this 
is done. 

Every morning he finds on his desk a "Daily Re- 
turn of Contracts, Requisitions and Orders to 
Agents" as it is technically known. It is a huge 
sheet recording every contract made the day before. 
It shows the quantity, value and price, together 
with a statement of the last contract made for the 
same article, the price, date and amount then or- 
dered. The only contracts now shown on this 
Daily Return are so called Exceptional Demands, 
like orders for two or three million blankets. 

Every Monday morning Mr. Weir gets a weekly 
contract statement headed : "Approximate Values of 

Contracts During Week " It shows by days 

the total amounts contracted for in every one of 
the major departments of supply during the preced- 
ing week. It is divided into two sections — one for 
contracts for definite quantities ; the other for "Con- 
tinuation Contracts," which are contracts produc- 
ing fixed quantities weekly or monthly. On this 



48 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

weekly contract return is also a statement of Sales 
by the Department. The War Office, as you shall 
see in a later chapter, sells as well as buys. The 
main purpose of this sheet, however, is to enable 
the Surveyor General to know every Monday morn- 
ing every pound that has been spent for supplies 
the week previous. 

Some sections of the Contracts domain are so 
huge that they become separate and self-sufficient 
principalities. The Royal Army Clothing Depart- 
ment furnishes the most effective example. Here 
you have a monster enterprise that spends $250,- 
000,000 a year. 

The Director General is Lord Rotherrnere, a 
civilian, brother of Viscount Northcliffe, and cast 
in the same virile and upstanding mould. He con- 
trols half a dozen industrial establishments, runs a 
string of successful periodicals on the side and rep- 
resents the highest type of commercial magnate re- 
cruited for the Business of War. He is virtually 
head of the war-created Ready-Made Clothing 
Trust in England because all needles in the kingdom 
fly at his will. The wearing apparel needs of the 
British soldiers come ahead of those of the civilian. 
After food the next most important supply item is 
clothes. The machine for the garment and acces- 
sory provision is characteristic of the thoroughness 
and efficiency that mark the whole British supply 
organisation. It is charted and diagrammed so 



ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 49 

comprehensively that you can easily follow every 
stage. 

The Royal Army Clothing Department is pri- 
marily a vast department store that provides its 
own stocks. The control of wool — which I have 
described — solved the principal problem of produc- 
tion. The contracts are let to regular manufac- 
turers. Each one has a definite article to produce. 
It may be jacket, trousers, puttee, sock, shoe or cap. 
There is more to the job, however, than merely 
placing orders and watching the goods come in. It 
means constant touch with all trade complications; 
knowledge of raw materials; meeting labor condi- 
tions and forecasting future requirements. 

Inspection plays a large part in the army cloth- 
ing scheme. Every garment must be made up to 
specifications or it goes back to the maker. Some 
idea of the scope and effectiveness of inspection is 
obtained when you learn that out of 3,000,000 
pieces of clothing inspected last July 117,000 were 
rejected. Out of 2,000,000 pairs of shoes sent in 
68,000 pairs were turned down. In one lot of 
184,000 sheepskin coats — worn by motor truck 
drivers— 27,000 were found to be below standard. 

The British army clothing contract is a model of 
its kind. The Continuation System is used. This 
means that contracts are placed so as to produce 
a given quantity every week. Combined with this 
system is a "Break" clause which stipulates a four 
weeks' notice on either side before the contract is 



50 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

broken. In this way the Public Purse is safe- 
guarded because in the event that the war ends sud- 
denly all contracts can be closed down in one month 
instead of three, six or nine months, which would 
be the case if there were no such agreement. The 
whole Continuation System (which we may well 
emulate) standardises production and provides for 
an even and constant distribution of work and out- 
put. 

The British have found that the key to success- 
ful army clothing supply is to place orders so that 
Arrears are eliminated. Arrears are goods over- 
due for delivery. To render them impossible a 
census of machinery is taken periodically with the 
idea of placing contracts so that no contractor will 
try to manipulate more than the capacity of his 
plant. He is thus prevented from taking on more 
than he can produce and then farming out the sur- 
plus to the sweat shop. 

As with food, the clothing supply must be made 
continuous and unfailing. The clothing and acces- 
sory demands are transmitted from the front to the 
Divisional Ordnance Stores officer, who issues the 
requirements from a Field Base. A check is kept 
on every article that goes out so that it can be in- 
stantly replaced. If 10,000 overcoats are issued at 
X Base in France a duplicate number are sent over 
from England the very next day and 10,000 more 
are ordered from the factory. 

Glance at the statistics of the Royal Army Cloth- 



ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 51 

ing Department and you get a staggering array of 
figures. Since the outbreak of the war 24,500,000 
pairs of shoes and 17,700,000 khaki jackets have 
been issued. The total issues for the last fiscal year 
include 12,160,000 flannel shirts, 26,000,000 socks, 
6,000,000 jackets, 6,000,000 pairs of trousers, 
2,200,000 overcoats, 3,370,000 caps and hats and 
3,500,000 cardigans. 

To manufacture and equip this immense array 
of stuff were required 52,000,000 yards of flannel, 
437,000,000 buttons, 5,500,000 yards of overcoat 
cloth, 11,125,000 yards of drab serge and 154,000 
gross of hooks and eyes. 

Yet this is only one detail of Departmental Sup- 
ply. Other items issued during a year by the Royal 
Army Clothing Department maintain the standard 
of these titanic numerals. They comprised 9,148,- 
000 puttees, 8,000,000 Turkish towels, 3,700,000 
tooth brushes, 2,300,000 shaving brushes 3,500,000 
razors, 4,687,000 pairs of suspenders, 3,700,000 
table knives, 3,500,000 forks, 3,738,000 spoons and 
2,635,000 "housewives," for Tommy must do his 
own sewing in the trenches. From these facts you 
can see the enormity of the job of equipping the 
American army on anything like the scale that the 
European War demands. 

So much for the Contracts Branch. It has done 
its work. Throughout the world the machines in 
thousands of factories are humming to provide the 
supplies that will feed and clothe the British armies. 



52 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

On millions of acres from Canada to Australia 
crops are being grown and harvested, forests felled 
and flocks shorn to the same consuming end. The 
Producer has qualified; it is now up to the Dis- 
tributor to take up the task. Thus it comes about 
that we hitch our wagon to the star of the Quarter- 
master General and his cohorts and see how the sup- 
plies are mobilised and sent on their way to sustain 
and to clothe. 

At once you find yourself in contact with a close- 
knit and perfectly geared system. But this time you 
are nearer to actual war. You meet with losses; 
you touch disaster; you comprehend for the first 
time the wrack and agony of suspense. You find 
that even with the transport of the unromantic bis- 
cuit there are thrills and dangers. 

It is one thing to order supplies from the safety 
and comfort of an office in London or through an 
agent in Montreal, Chicago or Sydney; it is quite 
another to get that material across the perilous seas 
to its destination. 

The Quartermaster General picks up the task of 
Supply from the moment that the contract is made 
and nurses the commodity along every stage of its 
journey toward consumption. This means, of 
course, that there must be first, the closest possible 
co-operation between the two departments; second, 
the most intimate co-ordination between the over- 
seas forces and the mobilising and distributing 
agencies. The whole genius of organisation is dedi- 



ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 53 

— — — — ■ •— — — ■» — ■»■ — — » 

cated to one dynamic purpose: not to be caught 
unawares. Eternal vigilance and team work are 
the watchwords of these sleepless stewards of the 
soldier stomach. 

Two distinct labours confront the Quartermas- 
ter General. One is to get the supplies mobilised 
in England (the only cargoes that go straight to 
France are bulk stuff like oats and flour) ; the other 
is to tranship these supplies to France and the 
other theatres of war in sufficient and continuous 
quantities to maintain the armies. 

You have already seen how the army needs are 
made known through the Monthly or Trimonthly 
Demands. But these demands are subject to daily, 
even hourly amendment. Emergencies arise out of 
the swift and tragic march of war events that must 
be quickly dealt with. Here are some instances: 

One day the Quartermaster General got a tele- 
phone request from France for one hundred fathoms 
of wire rope with a tensile strength of twenty-five 
tons. Such a rope was unheard of. It later de- 
veloped that it was needed to haul a tank out of a 
shell hole. The only shop in London carrying this 
cable was discovered, and it was on the way to 
France the next day. 

There is a constant string of requests for articles 
that must be created on the spur of the demand. At 
the height of the first battle of the Somme the ter- 
rific mud made it necessary to bring up shells on 
mule and horseback. Trucks were useless in the 



54 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

sea of slush. "Send carriers for shells," was the 
frantic appeal from the front. The Director of 
Ordnance and Equipment Stores devised a scheme 
of wooden holders connected by chains which could 
be slung over the pack animal's back. In forty- 
eight hours thousands of the carriers were not only 
under construction but some were already at the 
field of battle. 

During that first terrible winter of war when the 
British regular soldier lived a lifetime of horror in 
the frozen trenches, the problem of a portable food 
container that would keep food hot had to be solved. 
It was impossible to make thermos bottles in suffi- 
cient quantities so tin tubs were requisitioned. A 
layer of horse hair — a non-conductor — was put be- 
tween the lining and it met the requirements. 

About this time came the first attacks of "trench" 
or frozen feet, not "cold feet" in the American 
slang vernacular, however. A remedy had to be 
found. The Department chemists got the request 
late in the afternoon, worked all night compound- 
ing a chemical solution and 20,000 gallons were 
headed for the front the following day. 

But irrespective of these unexpected variations 
from the even and nicely calculated course of army 
supply there is always the supreme responsibility of 
keeping the structure intact. The cornerstone of 
this structure is the Reserve which is a definite 
quantity of food calculated to feed a certain num- 
ber of troops for a certain time. It must be main- 



ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 55 

tained at all hazards. It thus becomes the Insur- 
ance against breakdown in transport; enemy action 
— all those menaces that beset the lines of food 
communication. 

All British supply depots are required to keep 
a fixed Reserve. This is why the huge assem- 
blages of food in England are called Supply Re- 
serve Depots. The Reserve is always designated in 
terms of days. Let us assume for the purpose of 
illustration that the fixed or authorised reserve is 
thirty days. This means that in every depot or base 
enough essential supplies must be kept to feed its 
dependent army for thirty days. The job, there- 
fore, is to keep tab on this reserve. Making thirty 
days the authorised reserve gives the Quartermas- 
ter General sufficient leeway to replenish stocks even 
in far-away places like Salonika. Here you have the 
secret of maintaining an uninterrupted supply of 
food for millions of troops scattered in the four 
quarters of the globe. 

In order to know just where he stands the Quar- 
termaster General must reconcile daily needs 
(which is consumption), actual reserve available at 
home and abroad and supplies contracted for. This 
requires constant juggling but it has all been re- 
duced to such a precise science that there has never 
been a break in the chain. 

Here is where the co-ordination between the Pro- 
duction and Distribution branches of the Business 
of War proves its value. One of the links is the 



56 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Weekly Progress Report. It is a form — filled in 
with a typewriter — which contains a list of all the 
food and supplies contracted for. It is really a book 
for it includes an index of items and the page on 
which they appear. This report, which is fur- 
nished by the Surveyor General of Supply to the 
Quartermaster General, literally shows "the prog- 
ress made each week towards the completion of con- 
tracts entered into for supplies for the Expedition- 
ary Forces." I quote the exact title. It is a remark- 
ably efficient exhibit — another evidence of the in- 
genuity of the supply scheme. 

On this report you see a description of the article 
ordered, the number of the Demand on which it 
originally appears, the name of the contractor, the 
quantity to be produced, the amount already deliv- 
ered, the balance due. If this balance is to be de- 
livered in weekly or monthly instalments the pre- 
cise facts are stated. By looking at the Progress Re- 
port the Quartermaster General's aide who has to 
do with biscuits, for instance, can tell what the 
whole biscuit situation is. If it is set forth that 
10,000,000 pounds are to be delivered to the sup- 
ply depots in England on the first of every month 
he can plan the distribution of it to the last tin. 
So with every other item on the list. Since the 
Progress Report meets the requirements as set forth 
in the Monthly Demand there is seldom any sur- 
plus. Waste is minimised. 
- The Progress Report is just one cog in the system 



ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 57 

of Army Supply Intelligence which enables the 
Quartermaster General to sit at his desk in London 
with his ringer on the control of the whole machine. 
I will now show how it works in connection with 
the Expeditionary Force in France, which involves 
millions of men, hundreds of thousands of animals 
and makes, so far as bulk is concerned, the heaviest 
subsistence demands. Yet it is supplied as easily 
as if it were one fiftieth the size. 

Every day the Quartermaster General receives by 
wire from the General Headquarters in France the 
Daily State of Supplies Report. It shows the num- 
ber of days' reserves of all essential supplies — food, 
forage and fuel — on hand at noon the day before at 
all the Base and Advanced Supply Depots in France. 
It also shows the authorised reserve ; and the num- 
ber of troops and animals fed. If the authorised 
reserve, let us say, is 30 days and X Depot reports 
ten days' supply of bacon the Quartermaster Gen- 
eral wonders why that reserve is not kept up. He 
has it increased at once. He gets a similar telegram 
from every other theatre of war. From these re- 
ports is made the General Supply State which is the 
document to which I referred at the beginning of 
this book and which summarises the British supply 
state everywhere. 

Another document which shows the centralisa- 
tion of supply information is the Report of Feeding 
Strength which is sent in every day from all the 
armies. This is necessary because of the variety of 



58 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

the demand made upon the feeding facilities. On 
this sheet you can see the numerical strength of 
every army unit above railhead (which means the 
men at the front) ; the forces on the lines of com- 
munication which comprise the Army Service Corps, 
the reserves, and the troops resting after having 
been in action; hospital patients, medical staff, 
nurses, Allies, civilians and prisoners of war. All 
must be fed. In short, the total gross feeding 
strength is revealed here. One distinctive feature 
of this report is that while it shows every mouth 
that must be fed in France it also shows the quan- 
tity of food "packed" for these mouths; "packed" 
means the quantities sent up from the supply depots. 
These figures should equalise each other. If more 
food is "packed" than is consumed then some one 
must answer for waste. 

This is the system for France. It is no less com- 
plete and up to the minute for Salonika, Egypt, 
Africa or Mesopotamia, where the food must travel 
thousands of miles instead of the comparatively few 
leagues across the Channel. From every far-away 
overseas force comes a Daily State Telegram called 
the Urgency Report, which gives the daily state 
of supplies and the fixed reserve requirements. If 
Salonika wires "Jam 23 ; tea 20; biscuit 15" it means 
that she has twenty-three days' supply of jam, twen- 
ty of tea and fifteen of biscuit. All is well, for 
more is on the way. But if she wires "Jam 5" it 
means that she only has five days' supply left. The 



ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 59 

replenishment of her stores has been sunk and the 
Quartermaster General must get busy to build up 
the reserve. By the process that I have just outlined 
the Quartermaster General is absolute master of the 
situation. All the knowledge of demand and supply 
is at his fingers' ends and this knowledge not only 
spells power but provision. 

We now come to the final link in the supply chain 
so far as England is concerned. It is the Supply 
Reserve Depot where food mobilisation, prior to 
shipment to the overseas forces occurs. The Sup- 
ply Depot had its origin in the "food magazines" 
inaugurated by Gustavus Adolphus. The "Lion of 
the North" would be bewildered, however, at the 
extent to which his primitive idea of army supply 
segregation has grown if he could see one of these 
institutions to-day. 

There are various Supply Reserve Depots in Eng- 
land. I went to the largest because it was also the 
most picturesque. It is located not so many miles 
from London — a pleasant and historic spot, washed 
by the Thames, where John Evelyn lived and Sam- 
uel Pepys often came. Here dwelt Peter the Great 
during his sojourn in England; from its ancient 
wharves Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hind swung at 
anchor in the olden days. 

In August, 1914, this place was a moderately 
sized cattle market ; to-day it is a supply depot with 
a capacity for a month's rations for 1,000,000 men 
and 375,000 horses. It ships 30,000 tons of sup- 



60 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

plies to France every day. Incidentally it also car- 
ries provision for 300,000 troops training in that 
particular part of England and their 30,000 ani- 
mals. Such is the marvel of war expansion under 
the pressure of incessant demand. 

A flood of supplies pours into the Depot day and 
night by rail, barge and motor truck. It is a dyna- 
mo of energy and movement. The stuff is all stored 
in immense warehouses which are named and num- 
bered. It is then repacked according to the needs 
of troops abroad and shipped away again. The 
officer in charge gets a copy of the Monthly De- 
mand of the overseas forces. He knows, therefore, 
what he must provide. He also receives a copy 
of the Progress Report, which enables him to know 
what he is to receive. Once more you get the usual 
example of complete working information. 

At this Depot as well as at all other Supply 
Depots, British supply organisation repeats itself. 
The 3,000 employes are manned as a military unit 
and with perfect co-ordination. There is a Depart- 
ment of Requirements which allots quantities; a 
Stores Section which keeps track of stocks and re- 
newals; a Home Section which looks after the re- 
quirements of the Home Forces that are supplied; 
a Foreign Section which watches overseas Demands 
and the Progress Report; a Movements Bureau 
which loads and unloads the freight cars and keeps 
the channels of traffic clear; a Shipping Branch 
which deals with loading and tonnage. 




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ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 61 

Some of the supplies go straight to France by- 
barge; the rest is railed to the southern ports and 
loaded on ships. Every ship carries duplicate in- 
voices of the cargo. One of these is checked up at 
the receiving port and returned to the shipper as a 
receipt ; the other remains at the receiving port and 
becomes the first link in a new chain of accounting 
that follows the supplies to their final destination. 

h In order to obtain the closest possible co-operation 
the Commanding Officer — designated an Assistant 
Director of Supplies — sends a Circular Memoran- 
dum (mimeographed) around to all his section 
heads every day setting forth the day's require- 
ments in every department with special reference 
to transport. Thus the biscuit man knows what the 
tinned meat man is doing and so on. It enables 
everybody to work together. Likewise there is a 
Daily Progress report showing what has been done 
the day before. 

Each day a report on receipts, packing and ship- 
ments is sent to the Quartermaster General; every 
two weeks a complete "State of Supplies Despatched 
Overseas" is made up showing shipments to every 
port indicating the quantities sent. 

Every device known to modern labour saving is 
in operation here. Even the marking on the pack- 
ing cases is in keeping with the system that rules. 
The cases for France are marked with a green sham- 
rock ; those for Salonika are labelled with yellow 
ink ; for Egypt with blue. It is a great aid when a, 



62 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

ship must be loaded in a hurry as is always the case. 

One detail at this particular Depot will show the 
completeness with which England watches the ra- 
tions of her troops. In a small building that 
crouches between two towering warehouses is a 
completely equipped laboratory in charge of tem- 
porary officers who are experienced chemists. Every 
sample of food submitted to the Contracts Branch 
is tested here, and what is more to the point all the 
supplies that come to the depot are tested to see if 
they are up to the standard. The specimens of oil, 
pepper, biscuit, jam, bacon, baking powder, dried 
fruit, tinned meat and other articles are taken at 
random from the incoming bulk. Woe betide the 
contractor whose goods are found deficient! 

At this Depot 150,000 so-called Iron Rations are 
packed every day by women. These are the rations 
(biscuit, beef tea and sugar all packed in tins) that 
the British soldier is required to carry in his haver- 
sack to be eaten in case the food supply in the field 
breaks down. Every precaution is taken to keep 
Tommy from missing a single meal. 

It is worth adding that practically the only regu- 
lar officer at the Depot I have described is the Com- 
manding Officer. All the rest are temporary offi- 
cers — civilians who have come from every walk of 
life to do their "bit." You will find engineers, ac- 
countants, painters, sculptors, merchants, barristers, 
architects, lecturers, secretaries of smart clubs, 
manufacturers, professional cricketers too old for 



ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 63 

fighting, even a reformed vaudeville artist. It is 
true throughout the whole Supply and Transport 
Service. 

The well-oiled machine which feeds and supplies 
the British armies and which has just been taken 
apart for your edification would operate serenely, 
almost automatically, were it not for the hazard of 
shipping. The moment you reach the sea, ancient 
"nurse of England," you get at the really acute 
problem of supply because the most perfect process 
of provision is powerless against the submarine. 
The dangers and difficulties of water transport sur- 
round the Businesss of War with constant anxiety. 

Yet the British system has stood up against tor- 
pedo inroads that would have paralysed an organis- 
ation less resilient. Supply transport offers a shining 
mark for the U-boat because not less than 1 50 ships 
fly its flag. They are regulated by a Shipping Board 
which meets every Thursday at the War Office. At 
this weekly session tonnage requirements are dis- 
cussed and allotted. On account of the continual 
movement of troops these requirements vary. Def- 
erence is always made to food and munitions. They 
have the right of way. For the remaining com- 
modities it is a case of "give and take." 

The first question to be settled is that of avail- 
able ports. A harbour may be open for supply ships 
to-day and closed to-morrow by reason of mines, 
enemy action or some other cause. This applies 
both to France and England. The ships therefore 



64 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

must be fitted to the ports. Once in a port they 
must be unloaded as quickly as possible. Shipping 
cannot wait. Tonnage these days is as the breath 
of life. 

Because of the incessant sinkings new ships must 
be constantly "found." It is only by the most con- 
stant touch with all shipping movements that the 
pawns can be successfully shifted on this animated 
and momentous chess board. 

The Quartermaster General has created an elab- 
orate system of contact with all supply vessels no 
matter where they are. Before him every day is a 
Shipping Sheet containing the names of all these 
ships, just where they are and what they are carry- 
ing. If a vessel loaded with tinned meat and bound 
from America to England is sunk the lost cargo is 
immediately re-ordered by cable. If a ship laden 
with supplies for the overseas forces goes down 
another is sent out at once with a duplicate cargo. 
No loss is permitted to remain a loss. 

The check on forage vessels is an illuminating 
instance of the incessant watch on transport. Take 
oats. Before the Forage Committee (which buys 
all the grain and fodder and which is a part of the 
Quartermaster General's Service) is a sheet headed 
Oats Situation. At the top is printed the monthly 
requirements for France, which happens to be 
95,000 tons. Below is a schedule of the actual 
supply at all the depots in France in terms of days. 
In another column is a statement of all oats ships 



ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 65 

"advised," together with their last Admiralty-re- 
ported positions at sea and the tonnage of their 
cargoes. A Daily State of all forage shipments is 
made from these sheets. 

The tragedies of the torpedo try the soul of the 
forces behind army supply. Out of the daily dramas 
of trial and tribulation come little epics of action; 
miracles of initiative and resource. There is no 
time for parley or conference. Contingencies must 
be met as they happen. Let me lay bare some of 
these episodes of efficiency that enliven the life of 
the Department : 

One night in the early months of the war the 
telephone rang in the office of G. M. G. 6 at the War 
Office. The Colonel in charge took up the receiver. 
France was calling. The Commandant of a large 
base supply depot said anxiously. 

"The German advance has made our three supply 
bases untenable. We must have a new port base by 
to-morrow and enough supplies to feed the expedi- 
tionary force." The force then numbered nearly a 
quarter of a million men. 

"All right," replied the Colonel, "it shall be 
done." 

He called up the Army Shipping Bureau, where 
there is always some one on watch. "Have you 
ten available ships?" he asked. 

"Yes," was the reply. 

"Then have them all at at six o'clock in the 

morning," was his command. 



66 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

He then rang up three Supply Reserve Depots 
and ordered the shipment of supplies on to this 
port, special trains. At noon the next day the load- 
ed vessels were on their way to France. It is in- 
teresting to add that the port used in this emer- 
gency is the one where the first American Expedi- 
tionary force landed, and which is now used by our 
Government. 

Sinkings always call for swift and decisive ac- 
tion. A ship loaded with flour for the forces in 
Mesopotamia was sunk in the Mediterranean. 
Three additional ships with duplicates of this 
cargo were all torpedoed in rapid succession. Mean- 
while the supply of flour for General Sir Stanley 
Maude's army was getting dangerously low. By 
an energetic use of the cable enough was borrowed 
from Egypt to tide it over until the arrival of the 
fifth ship, which broke the hoo-doo. 

Here is still another kind of emergency. Last win- 
ter a big blizzard in the Eastern American States 
congested railway traffic and prevented the wheat 
trains from getting into Hoboken, New Jersey, 
where the British grain ships load. Wheat sud- 
denly became very scarce in England. The Forage 
Board, which knew of all available sources bought 
up the supply and there was no discomfort. The 
men of the "Q. M. G." always find a way. 

Again, one of the most important ports in France 
was blocked by the sinking of a ship at the mouth 
of the harbour. At this port was a base supply depot 



ARMY DEMAND AND SUPPLY 67 

that fed one-fourth of the British army in France. 
To open a new port was impossible. Overnight the 
Quartermaster General's Department shifted the 
whole shipping scheme. A dozen vessels were di- 
verted to other ports and the supplies rushed North 
on special trains. There was not an hour's delay 
in the procession of food to the front. 

So it goes. Each day brings its exactions and 
its exigencies and likewise its compensation in the 
shape of victory over threatened disaster. The 
prosaic task of maintaining army supply becomes 
invested with a glamour of adventure no less stir- 
ring and romantic than the feats of the firing line 
it feeds. 

In the last analysis, War is Worry and Work. 



Ill — Feeding the Fighting Millions 

THE troops had gone "over the top" that 
morning. Shells still rent the air and 
there was tension all up and down the 
line. Nearly all the casualties had been "cleared" 
but the list was growing every hour. Across 
"No Man's Land" flared the ominous white 
signals that indicated impending enemy move- 
ments; there might be reprisals any moment. It 
was still a ticklish corner for a civilian to find him- 
self in. 

Suddenly the appetising odour of hot stew smote 
the nostrils, overcoming the acrid smell of smoke 
that hung like a pall over the leprous landscape. 
It was like a message from home. 

"Here comes the 'chow,' " spoke up a husky 
young Canadian. 

Hardly were the words out of his mouth before 
the food squad was in our midst with steaming 
"dixies" and the thrill of war was forgotten in the 
unromantic consumption of beef and potatoes, 
washed down with tea. All the time the German 
guns boomed an incessant "strafe." 

Late that afternoon I made my way back to 
headquarters under the mantle of a friendly haze. 
Just behind the first line trenches I saw a sinister, 
crimson splash on the ground. 

68 



FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 69 

"What's that?" I asked the captain, who was 
showing me around. 

"One of the food squad was 'done in' here," was 
his laconic reply. 

A few hundred yards away we struck the light 
railway that is used generally in the war zone to 
transport supplies. A well-aimed shell had blown 
up fifteen or twenty yards of track only an hour 
before, yet a detail of engineers was already out 
at work repairing it. 

In this little picture you visualise the hazard and 
hardship that attend the bringing up of Tommy's 
food in France. What happened in the bloody angle 
of the battle line that I have just described is hap- 
pening every day and every night wherever the 
British soldier sets up his fighting abode. Regard- 
less of the deadly storm that beats about him he 
never misses a meal. His rations — even the tin 
dishes that contain them — are cogs in a ceaseless 
and unfailing system of provision that is no less 
effective under fire than back at the original source 
of supply. From the moment that the food and 
equipment reach the port of arrival in France until 
it is distributed to the soldier in the field it is under 
incessant supervision and accounting. 

In a previous chapter I explained the organisa- 
tion which enables the Quartermaster General to 
all the British Forces to sit at a desk in London 
with his finger on the pulse of the whole Supply and 
Transport situation. I then dealt with the Province\ 



70 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

of Production, whose titanic demands draw upon 
the whole world of output. Its seat of Government 
is the War Office in London. 

We now enter the Domain of Distribution, whose 
capital is that best known and least known of all 
Allied war establishments, the General Headquar- 
ters of the British Armies in France, or "G. H. Q." 
as it is more commonly known. From this pic- 
turesque, time-worn building with its cobblestone 
court, which has jingled with the spurs of many 
generations of French soldiers in the making, radi- 
ates the conduct and control of a marvellous ma- 
chine — a Subsidiary Corporation in the Business 
of War, but just as many-sided and efficient as the 
Parent Corporation which stocks its shelves. 

When you cross the frontiers of the Domain of 
Distribution you become a spectator of the vast 
Drama of Life and Death, whose stage is a far- 
flung fighting front, and whose curtain is a Curtain 
of Fire. You hear the shriek of shells ; you touch 
the tragedy and terror of actual combat; you see the 
wounds of war gaping before you. Here the ration 
is as vital as the shell. Subsistence means Exist- 
ence itself! 

To grasp clearly the whole scheme of British 
Army Supply in France you must first get the de- 
tails of the organisation in your mind. To begin 
with there is at General Headquarters an exact re- 
plica of the Quartermaster General's organisation 
at the War Office. Every head of Department in 



FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 71 

London has what is called an "opposite number" 
in France. It is headed by Quartermaster General, 
Lieutenant General Sir Ronald Maxwell, who 
bears the same relation to the supply force in the 
field that Lieutenant General Sir John S. Cowans 
bears to all the forces everywhere. He is the rank- 
ing subsistence officer in France. 

With the rest of the organisation, however, there 
is a slight variation. In the War Office Major 
General A. R. Crofton Atkins is Director of Supply 
and Transport, combining the executive responsi- 
bility for both branches of the service. In France 
the task is so colossal in actual interpretation that 
there is a separate Director of Supply and a sepa- 
rate Director of Transport. For the purpose of 
this article we are concerned solely with the prob- 
lem of Supply. Transport will be dealt with later on. 

This means that the dominant personality of this 
narrative is Brigadier General E. E. Carter, C. B., 
Director of Supplies. His desk is the nerve centre 
of the organisation that feeds the front and the 
rear. He is big, broad, up-standing and wears a uni- 
form as if he were born in it. In the South African 
War he was Assistant Director of Transport, yet he 
turned as swiftly and as competently to the task of 
Supply as if he had been trained for it all his life. 
It is a tribute to the versatility of the British regu- 
lar. Ask him what rules lie behind the whole 
system that he galvanises and he will say: 

"Supplies are valueless unless they are transport- 



>j2 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

able by every conceivable means and reach their 
destination without delay/' 

In this sentence you get the keynote of the whole 
Supply organisation in France. "Deliver the 
Goods" is the slogan that drives men and motors 
day and night. 

Let us now examine the task that is put up to 
General Carter. Every day and every night supply 
ships are arriving at various ports in France, laden 
with food and equipment for the millions of fight- 
ing men and forage and fuel for their horses and 
mechanical transport. This immense flood of sup- 
plies must be unloaded, some of it stored away in 
warehouses to keep up the fixed reserve as insur- 
ance against breakdown in transport; the rest of it 
goes up the line to maintain the war machine. 
Every pound and parcel must be registered and ac- 
counted for throughout its journey from arrival to 
consumption. This means keeping track of millions 
of tons of an immense variety of articles. 

With Distribution, as with Production, you find 
the triumph of scientific business methods. In Gen- 
eral Carter's office, for example, is a huge chart, 
which tells the whole story of the extraordinary 
team work that stretches from port to trench. Noth- 
ing is left to chance. You will discover among 
other things a scheme of auditing that would do 
credit to a department store. You will see a relent- 
less "follow-up" system that pursues the wayward 
freight car, runs down the missing motor truck, 




Copyright by J. Russell & Sons, London. 

MAJOR GENERAL E. E. CARTER 
Director of Supply of the British Armies in France 



FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 73 

lets no guilty package escape and stands as a sleep- 
less guardian of goods. Books are kept and ac- 
counts standardised. Centralisation is the watch- 
word. The Director of Supply can sit at his office 
at "G. H. Q." and know at any hour of day or 
night what ships and their cargoes are headed for 
his ports; the exact amount of supplies in pounds, 
gallons and cases that are piled up at every one of 
his many supply depots and precisely what inroads 
are to be made upon them during the next twenty- 
four hours. In other words the well-nigh infalli- 
ble machinery of Army Supply Intelligence is at 
work all the time. 

Now all these remarkable results are only ob- 
tainable through one agency — Co-operation. I have 
rarely seen anywhere such team work as obtains in 
the dramatisation of the Army Supply idea in 
France. It is just as if a monster jobbing business 
had been reared by the British Government and 
dedicated to meeting the requirements in the field. 
Wherever you turn you find the parallel with trade. 

Here as elsewhere in the Commissariat the help- 
ful pyramid points the way. At the apex of it is 
the Director of Supply, who occupies the position 
of Vice President and General Manager, the Quar- 
termaster in the Field being the President. Rank- 
ing next to the Director are three Deputy Directors 
of Supplies. One has charge of the Inspection of 
all supplies; a second is the Chief Office Assistant, 
who corresponds to an Office Manager in an Ameri- 



74 » THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

can business; the third is the head of the so-called 
Investigation Department, which audits accounts 
and deals with Finance and Economy. 

The Deputy Director of Supplies in charge of the 
office has three assistants who rank as Assistant 
Directors of Supplies. The first of these deputies 
deals with the all-important matter of Demands. 
It is to him that the needs of the armies in the 
field are made known, and he in turn transmits the 
Demand covering these needs to the Quartermaster 
General in London, who provides the supplies 
through the Surveyor General of Supply. 

The second Assistant Director of Supplies is 
charged with the supervision of Shipping and 
Transportation, while the third has to do with Per- 
sonnel. This group of officers comprises the Sup- 
ply Directorate. It corresponds precisely with the 
Board of Directors of a Corporation, each Director 
being the head of a department. This Board meets 
every day. Every man, therefore, knows what 
his colleagues are doing, and is in touch with the 
whole field supply situation. 

This Supreme Court of Supply is merely the 
Headquarters Organisation. For all practical pur- 
poses it is duplicated in the field. One section is at 
the front, where each one of the five armies has 
its own Deputy Director of Supply and Transport. 
On the so-called Lines of Communication — the 
water, rail or public roads along which the Army 
and the supplies travel — there is still another Sup- 



FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 75 

ply Machine, including a Deputy Director of Sup- 
plies for the Northern Line, and a corresponding 
executive for the Southern Line. 

This brings us to the whole layout of Supply, 
which is set forth on what may well be called The 
Map of Distribution in France. There are many 
remarkable charts and diagrams in the scheme of 
Army Provision, but none exceeds this one in 
efficiency and detail. A child could understand it. 
It incarnates scientific business organisation. 

Spread it out before you, and you can see in red, 
blue and green lines and a succession of coloured 
circles, triangles and squares the whole scheme of 
supplying and equipping the Armies from the wharf 
in the French port straight through all the processes 
and repacking and transshipping up to the first line 
trenches. Every line on the map has a caption that 
explains precisely the activity that happens on it. It 
may be the shipping of bulk forage and grocery 
trains from a base port to an Advanced Depot. It 
may be an indication of the route of meat supplies, 
packed in detail at the wharf and bound for a 
freight station. It may reveal the movement of coal 
from the mines to the Rail Head, or it may empha- 
sise in a red circle that X Base is used solely for 
canned goods. I give these facts merely to show 
that the system was on paper before it was trans- 
lated into practice. 

Now let us see how it works in actual operation. 
For the purpose of Army Supply the whole of 



76 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Northern France has been divided into two dis- 
tricts. One is the Northern Line of Communica- 
tion, and includes two major ports of entry and a 
minor one. These ports feed and supply three of 
the armies. On the Southern Line are three major 
ports which feed, fuel and supply the two remain- 
ing British Armies. All the ports are called Base 
Supply Depots. By reason of the proximity of 
the Northern Ports to the fronts of the armies, 
there is a slight difference between the organisation 
of the Northern and Southern Lines. 

This difference lies in the fact that on the North- 
ern Lines the food practically goes straight from 
the Base Depot to the Rail Head — that is, to the 
terminus of the railway line, while on the Southern 
Line it goes in bulk to what is called an Advanced 
Base Supply Depot, where it is repacked into Divi- 
sional Trains, each one supplying the needs of two 
Divisions and sent on to Rail Head. At the Rail 
Head the system of distribution is the same for 
both lines. Here the supplies are unloaded on 
motor trucks, and sent to what is called a Refilling 
Point, where they are in turn transferred to horse- 
drawn wagons and taken up to the trenches. This, 
in brief, represents the main itinerary of the food 
from the time of its arrival until it reaches the Quar- 
termaster of the fighting unit, usually a Brigade 
Officer, who distributes it among the Regiments (or 
Battalions as they are known in the British Army). 
The miracle of all this shipping and reshipping, 




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FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 77 

packing and repacking, is that there is a definite rec- 
ord and check on every tin of beef until it reaches 
the kettle or the pot. 

There is still another slight difference between the 
Northern and Southern Lines. At the former all 
kinds of food and commodities are received at the 
same ports, while at the latter each port specialises. 
This means that in the North a Base Supply Depot 
houses petrol, groceries, meat and forage, while in 
the South one port deals exclusively with forage, 
another with petrol and cased goods and the third 
with bread and Ordnance Stores. Here, then, you 
have a general bird's-eye view of the Domain Dis- 
tribution. 

The whole operation is of peculiar interest and 
value to the United States because our overseas* 
troops face precisely the same conditions, both as 
to ports and lines of communication. In fact, the 
American Expeditionary Force is using an aban- 
doned Base Supply Depot, established by the Brit- 
ish in the early days of the war. 

But we cannot go into the feeding and supply- 
ing of the armies without first finding out what 
the tools of the trade are. With fighting these tools 
are men and guns ; with Supply and Transport they 
are, in the main, men, motors and wagons. The 
men who comprise the Army Behind the Army are 
the Army Service Corps — the unsung heroes of the 
hard- fought battles with wind, mud, rain, shells and 



78 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

every other menace that besets the transport of sup- 
plies under actual war conditions. 

The story of the Army Service Corps is in itself 
a romance not without thrills and heroism. It be- 
gan with Wellington's Royal Wagon Teams; later 
became the Commissariat and Transport in the 
Egyptian Campaign and had its baptism of blood 
in its present form in the Boer War. For years it 
was a sort of Cinderella of the Army, rejected and 
despised by the men of the line. There is caste in 
War just as there is in Society. Yet the aristo- 
crats of the forces would be impotent without the 
"Underground Cavalry," as the Army Service 
Corps is sometimes called. 

At the beginning of the war it numbered less 
than 10,000 men and a few hundred officers. To- 
day it is more than thirty times that number— a 
host greater than the Iron Duke ever commanded — 
one that vies in strength with Napoleon's mightiest 
array. You comprehend the scope of Supply and 
Transport and the millions that they serve when 
it takes such an army to fetch and carry alone. 

There is no space here to tell how the Army 
Service Corps is recruited and drilled ; how the men 
are assembled and weeded out according to their 
previous civil experience in the huge training camps 
in England; how a farm hand becomes the driver 
of a horse-wagon; and the one-time chauffeur of a 
peer's limousine in London becomes the driver of 
a five-ton motor truck in France; how grocers' 



FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 79 

clerks develop into Supply Depot stackers ; how bro- 
kers, bankers, expert accountants and business men 
in general are trained to be the officers of these bat- 
talions. These men from the ranks of trade be- 
come the "Temporary Officers," to whom Britain 
owes so much. 

There are Schools of Instruction in France at 
the Base Supply Depots where both officers and 
men get a final course of intensive training. The 
men are put through the paces in the handling of 
horses, harness and wagons and the up-keep of me- 
chanical transport. The officers are sent to school 
where there are daily lectures and where they are 
taught how to take their places as cogs in the whole 
system of Provision and Accounting. There is a 
series of text books for these schools just like the 
text books used in a university. The officers are 
required to pass an examination and if they fail 
they are sent back home. 

One of these text books — and it will give you 
some idea of the thoroughness of the course — is 
called "The Ready Reckoner/' In this book a 
Supply Officer is shown how to divide up rations. 
He is shown, for example, that if 160 complete 
daily rations are issued to him he can find out the 
bacon allowance by dividing this by four, which 
gives him 40 pounds, or the exact amount of bacon 
required. He is further shown that if he divides 
the bacon result by two, he can get the butter, cheese 
and oatmeal allowance, which is 20 pounds each. 



80 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

The whole system enables the conduct of the com- 
missariat to become mistake-proof. 

No Class A men are now used in the Army Ser- 
vice Corps. Class A men are fit for fighting. In 
the early days of the war there were many of them 
on the Lines of Communication, but as the armies 
expanded and the losses grew they were all weeded 
out. Thus in the "A. S. C." you find thousands 
of middle-aged patriots who are doing the work 
of younger men. 

Nor is all this patriotism confined to the middle- 
aged. I was talking one day to the Commanding 
Officer of the largest Base Supply Depots in France 
when an erect, white-haired man wearing the single 
star of a subaltern came up, saluted and gave a 
message in precise military fashion. When he was 
through he clicked his heels together, saluted again, 
and with a "Thank you, sir" made off. 

"Do you know who that officer is?" the Colonel 
asked of me. 

"No," I replied. 

"He is my father." 

In this case father was seventy-one years old, 
and a retired country squire, but, like many of his 
countrymen, he felt that he had to be doing some- 
thing. It is this sort of spirit that will win the war. 

One more highly important detail must be mas- 
tered before we can proceed with the operation of 
the Supply and Transport in the field. This detail 
deals with the most important freight that Trans- 



FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 81 

port is called upon to convey. I mean, of course, 
food and its accessories. Here we reach the one 
war subject of universal interest. Everybody eats; 
therefore, everybody is interested in the kind and 
quantity of food that the soldier gets. We will halt 
our line of march, therefore, and take a look at 
Tommy's larder. 

What most people do not realise is that Thomas 
Atkins is probably the best nourished soldier in 
the world. He is fed like the proverbial fighting 
cock. Moltke once said that "no army food is too 
expensive." This conjunction, laid down by a mas- 
ter of warcraft, is followed to the letter. There is 
no scandal of embalmed beef about the British 
Commissariat. The soldiers get the best that the 
market affords and lots of it. Officers and men 
have precisely the same ration. I have eaten at 
many a Tommy's mess at the front and behind the 
lines and I have always found the food abundant 
and excellent. Indeed, after courting eternal indi- 
gestion with French war bread (it is one of the real 
horrors of war) it is always a luxury to get the 
field-baked white bread which is part of the Brit- 
ish army ration. 

The soldier's daily ration has been scientifically 
worked out by the best food experts of England. 
In the Boer War it was one and one-fourth pounds 
of biscuit, one pound of fresh meat or one pound 
of tinned meat, four ounces of jam, three ounces 
of sugar, two ounces of desiccated vegetables, 



82 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

one-half ounce of tea, half an ounce of coffee and 
pepper and salt. This, however, was hermit's fare 
compared with the almost infinite variety of food 
available for the fighting men to-day, because, as 
you may recall, there are exactly four hundred 
and fifty items on the Quartermaster General's list 
of Supplies. 

At the beginning of the present war the Boer 
War ration was immediately reinforced by four 
ounces of bacon, three ounces of cheese, extra tea 
and one-eighth of a tin of condensed milk. This 
ration was the same for the men training at home 
and in France. Later a ration allowance of eight 
cents a day for each man was made to take the 
place of part of the home ration, and to be spent 
under the direction of the Officers of the Unit. 

Early in 191 7 a very radical amendment was 
made in the ration scale in France. Two rations were 
established ; one for the troops at the fighting front, 
who had to depend upon what is issued to them 
and who undergo severe physical hardships, and 
another, and slightly smaller ration for the troops 
on the Lines of Communication. The food for the 
fighting men is practically the same as for the men 
in the rear. The only difference is that they get 
more of it. The fighting or "Field Ration'' costs 
forty-five cents per day per man, while the so-called 
"L. of C. Ration" costs thirty-nine cents. 

Meat, of course, constitutes an important item 
in the stoking of the soldier's stomach. The Brit- 



FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 83 

ish Tommy is a carnivorous animal, and must have 
his beef. The normal daily ration for the fighting 
man is one pound of fresh or frozen meat. Three 
days out of every seven he also gets a small portion 
of the so-called "M. and V." ration, which is meat 
and vegetables, cooked and canned. Four days out 
of seven, instead of the "M. and V." ration he gets a 
similar portion of canned pork and beans. There is 
also an allowance of four ounces of bacon, which 
is served at breakfast. 

Bread is a very important item. The regular 
daily allowance is one pound of fresh bread or ten 
ounces of biscuit. Usually the bread ration is so 
arranged as to include seventy-five per cent of 
bread and twenty-five per cent of biscuit. 

Other items in the normal daily allowance for 
the troops at the front are ten ounces of rice, two 
ounces of butter, which is served three times a 
week, three ounces of jam, five-eighths of an ounce 
of tea (or coffee when desired), two ounces of 
cheese, two ounces of oatmeal three times a week, 
three ounces of sugar, one ounce of condensed milk, 
an ounce of pickles three times a week, two ounces 
of potatoes, eight ounces of fresh vegetables when 
obtainable, or two ounces of dried vegetables as 
a substitute, salt, pepper and mustard. As a luxury 
each man gets two ounces of smoking tobacco or 
cigarettes once a week, and a box of matches three 
times during the fortnight. 

Rum is served at the discretion of the General 



84 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Officer commanding. Its issue depends upon just 
what the troops are doing. In very cold weather 
a nip is given out every day, whether the men are 
in the first line trenches or behind. Rum is always 
issued, however, in that ghastly moment just before 
day break, when the troops "stand to" with ears, 
eyes and heart alert, waiting for the enemy attack 
that sometimes comes and sometimes does not. No 
ordeal, not even going "over the top," is such a 
strain on nerves as this moment of tense expect- 
ancy. The most copper-riveted of prohibitionists 
would not begrudge Tommy his wee drop of con- 
solation at this hour of dread and dawn. 

The "L. of C. Ration," which is also served to 
the "G. H. Q." troops, is precisely the same as this 
except that instead of a pound of fresh or frozen 
meat each day, only twelve ounces are issued. The 
issue of the remaining items on the list is on a 
corresponding scale of reduction. 

The ration that I have described is the regular 
issue. It has become, however, a sort of elastic in- 
stitution, adapting itself to season and locality. At 
some of the huge camps the men raise their own 
vegetables, the garden being tended by the perma- 
nent force. At one camp in France I saw a pig-sty 
and a rabbit warren which enriches the diet and 
provides extra luxuries for the men, because some 
of the meat is sold to the natives. 

Then, too, a so-called System of Substitution 
adds to the variety of Tommy's food. Last sum- 



FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 85 

mer when bacon was scarce all over England, sau- 
sage, fish, rabbits and brawn (or chopped meat) 
were substituted for the home forces. The War 
Office now controls a whole chain of sausage fac- 
tories, and a sausage issue takes the place of fresh 
meat one or two days a week in the field. This 
will mean a saving of five million dollars a year 
to the government. When I left France the Director 
of Supply was establishing piggeries to maintain 
a steady supply of bacon. 

Long experience with the feeding of soldiers has 
taught the food experts that the best way to keep 
men fit is to vary their diet as much as possible; 
hence the substitution is carried out to the last de- 
gree. Sardines, or tined herring in tomatoes, or 
canned veal loaf often take the place of preserved 
meat at the mid-day meal, while Cambridge sau- 
sage or roast sausage is used in lieu of bacon at 
breakfast. 

The British Tommy, unlike the French poilu, has 
two big meals a day. He has his bacon or tinned 
meat of some kind, bread and jam for breakfast, 
while at lunch he has stew or "bully beef," potatoes, 
vegetables and always a dessert, more often a pud- 
ding of some kind. His evening meal comes under 
the head of "tea" and includes cold meat, bread 
and jam. In the trenches supper is always hot. 
At all three meals he has his option of tea or coffee. 
These are the standard menus, subject always to 



86 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

amendment by reason of the system of substitution 
that I have described. 

Now, if the "Field" and "L. of C. Rations'' were 
the only food issues the task of provision would 
be comparatively easy. But the British Armies in 
France to-day are such a cosmopolitan assemblage 
that the matter of diet is as complicated as that of 
a World Food Congress recruited from all the na- 
tions of the universe. It results from the fact that 
when Britain sent out her trumpet call throughout 
the Empire, all the peoples of her dominions came 
flocking to the standard. They represent every race 
under the British flag and this means that white, 
brown, yellow and black men are geared up to the 
Great Cause. The Brahmin, Mohammedan, China- 
man, Kaffir, Egyptian, Fijian, the East Indian, West 
Indian and South African all meet at John Bull's 
mess table. W 7 ith the exception of the East Indian 
Cavalry they are enlisted in the Labor Battalions. 

You have a conflict of religion, taste, habit and 
custom, and every one of these eccentricities, born 
of climate, temperament and tradition, must be met 
and appeased. If not the fighter or laborer is dis- 
satisfed and his efficiency is impaired. Hence a 
separate and distinct ration is issued to every one 
of these foreign groups. At one Base Supply Depot 
exactly seventeen different diets are supplied. 

The Indian personnel, for example, has a ration 
which consists of atta, which is mealie meal; dhal 
(a, split pea), ghi, or nut oil, which is a substitute 



FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 87 

for butter; gur, a native sugar; mixed spices, fresh 
vegetables and fresh meat. 

The meat for the East India troops is obtained 
in very picturesque fashion. The East Indian will 
only eat goat and sheep meat, and this only when 
the animal is killed according to native rites. Near 
one of the British Base Depots in France is a huge 
goat and sheep farm, which is conducted entirely 
for the native troops. Every day you can see beard- 
ed and turbaned priests slitting the throats of the 
beasts with much Oriental ceremony. When the 
natives get their meat they know it is not profane. 
No British Quartermaster would dare to try to de- 
ceive them. 

The Fijians have a ration of frozen meat, rice, 
sugar, fresh vegetables, margarine or some other 
edible fat, while the Chinese are content with a 
little meat and a large amount of rice and bread. 
One of the luxuries of the Chinese diet is nut oil. 
Lentils, cheese, fresh vegetables and bread form the 
larger part of the menu of the Egyptian labor corps. 
So it goes. Every taste must be pandered to. It is 
the price that must be paid to keep the huge labor 
machine oiled and going. 

Nor must it be forgotten in connection with field 
rations that there is also a separate diet for the 
German prisoners of war, who are technically 
divided into what is known as "P. of W. Com- 
panies/' and segregated in camps surrounded by 
barbed wire fences. The British have found that 



88 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

it is both practical and expedient to let the German 
prisoners run their own messes. The normal daily- 
ration of a captured Hun is nine ounces of bread, 
six ounces of fresh or frozen meat five days a 
week and ten ounces of salt-cured herrings, sprats 
or smelts two days a week. He also gets a half an 
ounce of tea or coffee, an ounce of sugar, four 
ounces of potatoes, two ounces of turnips and peas 
or beans, three ounces of rice, two of oatmeal and 
a little jam and cheese. Recently the British have 
succeeded in making the so-called schwarzbrod, 
which is the familiar black bread of Germany. This 
not only makes the Boche happier but saves con- 
siderable money to the Government. 

Then, too, the British issue food to the French, 
Belgians, Portuguese and American troops in some 
instances, and also to the Women's Army Auxiliary 
Corps, or the "Wacs" as the Tommies call them. 
You can see, therefore, that with all these different 
types of rations, with the Iron Ration — the tinned 
emergency food that every soldier carries in his 
haversack — and the Train Ration which is given 
to the troops for consumption while travelling on 
boats or trains, there is an immense amount of de- 
tail to the provision of the inner man alone. 

Fortunately, animals have no choice of food, and 
the issue of forage is a simple matter. Heavy 
draught horses get seventeen pounds of oats and 
fifteen pounds of hay a day, while officers' mounts 



FEEDING THE FIGHTING MILLIONS 89 



and other horses get twelve pounds each of oats and 
hay. This is also the forage ration for mules of 
fifteen hands and upwards that are employed on 
heavy draught work. 



IV — From Ship to Trench 



YOU have now seen the kind of food that man 
and beast require. You have also had a swift 
panoramic glimpse of how it is transported 
from ship to stomach. We can now go into the 
work of this system which receives, checks, ac- 
counts, stores and sets it down at the very threshold 
of consumption. 

Perhaps the best way to continue the parallel with 
business would be to regard the huge Base Supply 
Depot as the Wholesale Branches and the so-called 
Detail Issue Stores where the units on the Lines 
of Communication get their rations as the Retail 
Branches. Keep this distinction in your mind, and 
it will be easier to follow the sequence of food 
events. 

Any port will serve to begin with, because the 
system is the same for all. Let us first take the 
largest of all the ports of entry in France. It is on 
the Northern Line, and, therefore, specialises in sup- 
plies. In this particular instance the specialties are 
forage, frozen meat and flour. 

Since this port is on the Southern Line and 
therefore somewhat different in executive organi- 
sation from the Northern Line, it may be well to 
say that the ranking officer is technically known as 
the Officer Commanding Base Supply Depot. His 

90 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 91 

chief is an Assistant Director of Supplies, whose 
headquarters are at the main Advanced Base Sup- 
ply Depot that he serves, and who in turn reports 
to the Director of Supplies at General Headquar- 
ters. 

A Base Supply Depot is simply a collection of 
huge sheds, or hangars, as the British call them. 
In this particular case they are all near the docks, 
where the goods can be readily removed from the 
ship and immediately stacked. Formerly all the 
work of Supply and Transport from the time a 
supply ship reached port was done by the Army 
Service Corps. In the autumn of 19 17 the job of 
unloading the vessels was taken over by the Direc- 
tor General of Transportation, who supervises the 
unloading. The actual piling up of the supplies is 
done under the direction of the Department of 
Labour, which controls the many native labour bat- 
talions. But the moment the supplies are piled up 
in the hangar they pass into the hands of the Army 
Service Corps and remain in its keeping until it 
reaches the kitchen, the stable or the garage. 

As soon as a supply ship touches at a Base Depot 
it is caught up in the toils of a perfect system. First 
of all, one of the duplicate invoices of cargo that 
accompanies the vessel is checked up and sent back 
to the port of departure in England or Canada as a 
receipt that the goods were delivered. The other 
duplicate invoice now becomes the first link of an 



92 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

endless chain of accounting that lasts until the sup- 
plies are consumed or destroyed. 

Probe into the whole Base Supply System and 
you find that the motto unfurled at the flag-pole is 
"Cut the Carry," which means that economy of 
time and labour in the handling of the immense 
stores is the keynote of progress. Everything is bent 
toward this end. Goods are stacked up so that 
they can be counted swiftly and easily. For this 
reason every pile of hay, oats, flour, or canned 
goods has, hanging alongside, what is known as a 
Tallyboard. This board contains the letter of the 
shed or hangar (each shed has a letter), the num- 
ber of the block (every different kind of commod- 
ity has a block or a street) and every stack in that 
block has a number. Additions or withdrawals 
from any block or stack of supplies are recorded 
on it and can be seen at once by the checkers-up. 
You could make a complete inventory of a Base 
Supply Depot in an incredibly short time. 

One reason is that the stacking of supplies is sci- 
entifically done. In harmony with the perfection 
of detail that marks the whole system, the Director 
of Supply has prepared a Manual for the Army 
Service Corps called "The Stacking and Storing 
of Supplies," which shows with simple and compre- 
hensive text and with cross-section illustrations just 
how stacks of cased goods, sacks and bales of hay 
can be piled up so as to expedite accounting and un- 
packing. From this you learn that there are such 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 93 

things as "Pillar Pile" for cases; and "Tower 
Stacking' 7 which enables the supplies to be carried 
up to the roof. 

One chapter in this book shows how much space 
is required for storing and stacking rations for 
given numbers of men and horses. A man, for ex- 
ample, can look at a pile of boxes and see at a glance 
how many troops it will feed. 

Here, as elsewhere throughout the whole Empire 
of Supply and Transport, absolutely nothing is left 
to chance. All Supply Officers, for example, no 
matter where stationed and who* have the slightest 
contact with Supplies must master a book entitled 
"Financial, Economic and Accountancy Regulations 
and Departmental Instructions." Every detail of 
work is here specifically explained. It thus becomes 
the Bible of Supply. You get the keynote of the 
whole Commissariat when you find that one of 
the first paragraphs in the book is this : 

"In time of peace the interests of economy, 
while entrusted in various degrees to adminis- 
trative and other officers, are also safeguarded 
by various checks and limitations, and in particu- 
lar by the total amounts voted by Parliament 
under the several heads of the estimates. During 
war, however, not only are these limitations to a 
certain extent removed, but the total expenditure 
is on a vastly larger scale. The possibilities of 
economy open to officers are consequently in- 



94 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

creased, and the elimination of waste in every 
branch of the Service becomes a matter of pri- 
mary importance, and should be the object of 
particular concern to each individual officer." 

Now let us see what happens at a Base Supply 
Depot. The one I shall use for illustration is main- 
ly used in the second largest hangar in the world, 
which is more than half a mile in length and over 
six hundred feet wide. It adjoins the biggest dock 
in France and is like a complete freight city under 
one roof. I have seen it when it contained 80,000 
tons of supplies, of which 30,000 tons were in oats, 
20,000 tons in hay, while the rest was flour and 
cased goods. 

The hangar was a label of foreign tongues. You 
heard Kaffir boys singing as they carried sacks of 
oats from ship to stack; a song of the Nile came 
from the Egyptian coolies, who hummed as they 
staggered under bales of hay; you caught the note 
of a sentimental German lullaby whistled by a pris- 
oner of war, trundling a truck of canned groceries. 
Here was a whole world of labour, recruited from 
friend and foe alike, and marshalled to the stupen- 
dous task of feeding the British soldier. Amid an 
almost indescribable din and what seemed to be 
the wildest confusion there was admirable control. 

The Commanding Officer of the Depot, sitting 
at his desk in a little frame office that is almost 
lost between his towering ramparts of food and for- 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 95 

age, is absolute master of the tumultuous situation. 
He is on his job at eight o'clock. At eight-thirty 
he has a conference with representatives of the Ad- 
miralty, the Director of Docks, the Director of 
Labour and the Director General of Transportation. 
Thus he knows what cargoes are to be landed and 
what human and other machinery are to handle 
them. 

More than this he also knows every hour pre- 
cisely how his whole monster business stands down 
to the last case of jam. How is this possible when 
from 20,000 to 30,000 tons of supplies arrive and 
depart daily and when all this goods is being con- 
stantly transferred from one place to another? 

The answer is quite easy. Such a complete check 
is kept on every pound of incoming and outgoing 
stuff that the "O. C," as the Officer Commanding 
is called, is able to send his chief at the Advanced 
Supply Depot what is called The Daily Stock Wire, 
which tells the precise amount of supplies on hand 
and what is due to arrive the next day. This is 
achieved by balancing Receipts, as the incoming 
supplies are termed, and Issues, as the outgoing 
supplies are known. The surplus is technically 
known as Remains. This is obtained through a 
simple but effective process. Each group of com- 
modities is in charge of a Section Officer, who 
renders a Daily State of his department every night. 
This sets forth specifically the amount of food he 
has on hand the preceding night, the day's Receipts 



96 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

and Issues, the Transfers or Issues for local troops 
and the Remains, at the time of making the report. 
The sum of these Daily States furnishes the in- 
formation conveyed in the Daily Stock Wire. 

The Daily Stock Wire is necessary to the Deputy 
Director of Supplies at the Advanced Base Supply 
Depot, who must know just how much goods he 
can draw on. Remember at this point, that the ad- 
vanced Base Supply Depot is the link between Base 
Supply Depot and the Regulating Station 
where the Supply Trains for the front are made up. 
If there is a sudden increase of troops in the field 
and more supply trains must be made up every day 
the Deputy Director of Supplies knows immediately 
that demands for more food can be filled at once. 
It is part of the perfect interlocking of supply 
forces. 

The supplies from the Base Supply Depot which 
I have just described — and it is typical of all in 
the Southern Line — are shipped in bulk; that is, in 
solid trains of bread, meat, forage, flour, petrol or 
groceries. These trains with the exception of those 
carrying groceries, go direct to the Regulating Sta- 
tion, where the freight is repacked onto the Divi- 
sional Trains. The grocery trains are unpacked at 
the Advanced Base Supply Depot and the freight 
sorted out according to Divisional needs. 

One reason why there is such a constant proces- 
sion of bulk trains out of the Base Supply Depots 
is that there must be a quick turnover at the ports 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 97 

because vessels are coming in every day and a con- 
gestion of shipping would be fatal. One day's 
hang-up might clog the supply machine all the way 
up to the first line trenches. These bulk trains are 
loaded inside the hangars. The stacks are all piled 
alongside the tracks so that loading is expedited. 
"Cut the Carry" is carried out to the last degree. 

Every bulk train from any Base Supply Depot 
on the Southern Line includes bread. This is be- 
cause no Base is complete without a Field Bakery. 
Bread, when all is said and done, is the soldier's 
staff of life. He must get it in continuous and 
enormous quantities. This means that the dough 
troughs and the ovens must be constantly in action. 

These bakeries are all operated by Army Service 
Corps men, most of them practical bakers, before 
they went to the war. These establishments are 
marvels of output. They are all practically alike 
in operation, although in some the dough is kneaded 
by hand and in others by machinery. The standard 
loaf for the troops weighs two pounds, which is two 
normal daily bread rations. The average output 
of the largest Field Bakery is 220,000 loaves a day, 
or 440,000 rations. They work day and night. 

These Field Bakeries are models of production. 
It takes just three hours for the flour to pass from 
barrel to baked bread. Once baked it is stacked 
in bins for twenty-four hours, then sacked, weighed, 
loaded into a freight truck and rushed off to the 
Advanced Base Supply Depot. The railway tracks 



98 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

come right into the bakery sheds. No army bread 
is served to the troops until it is ninety-six hours 
old. Part of this time, however, is consumed in 
transit. 

The same scientific scrutiny is placed over the 
army bread as over every other article that Tommy 
eats. At these Field Bakeries you will find com- 
plete laboratories which bake and wash and test 
samples of all the flour to ascertain its ingredients. 
One reason for this close watch is that the soldier's 
bread — unlike the bread of civil life — must do con- 
siderable travelling. If there is an excess of sharp- 
pointed bran in the flour it will puncture the cells 
of gluten on the road and impair the nutritive qual- 
ity of the loaf. In other words, the flour must be 
so mixed as to get a sufficient gluten percentage to 
withstand the hardship of much rough jolting and 
rehandling on the railroad. You will also find in 
these laboratories a dough meter, which analyses 
samples of all the dough that is mixed. The big 
fact about the Field Bakery, aside from the enor- 
mous output, is that the soldier's bread is safe- 
guarded by every device known to science. 

Even these Field Bakeries do not escape the thrill 
of actual war. In the Dardanelles campaign the 
bakers were as much exposed to fire as the fighting 
men. At Helles a bakery was established on the 
peninsula and was maintained within four miles 
of the Turkish lines during the whole period of 
occupation. 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 99 

All the Base Supply Depots are not under cover. 
The principal Base on the Northern Line, where 
in one day I saw 40,000 tons of oats and 32,000 
tons of hay, is an outdoor town and where you 
can wander through acres of supplies. Here the 
oats are conveyed by suction from the holds of the 
ships into sacks, which are stacked up to a height 
of sometimes a hundred feet. They are protected 
from the weather by tarpaulins. 

In order to prevent spontaneous combustion 
among the huge mountains of hay the temperature 
of the stacks is taken regularly, with thermometers 
fastened to the ends of long poles. These thermom- 
eters are stuck into the heart of the pile every two 
weeks. 

At the Base Supply Depots on the Northern Line 
the Officer Commanding is an Assistant Director of 
Supplies, because these Bases and their Advanced 
Bases are practically located in the same place. 
Their Regulating Stations are also close at hand 
because the armies they feed are much nearer to 
their source of supply than those fed by the South- 
ern Lines, where the Base and Advanced Depot are 
miles apart. 

We now turn from the Wholesale Branch of the 
Business of War as represented by the Base Supply 
Depot to the Retail End, which is the Detail Issue 
Store. Here is where the Army becomes a shop- 
keeper and runs a miniature Department Store. 

The Detail Issue Store is the place where the 



ioo THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

food for troops not at the Army Front is given out. 
This means that it supplies the whole Army Service 
Corps, the troops at the Rest Camps, where the 
drafts from England remain for a brief interval 
before going to the front; Labor Battalions, Pris- 
oners of War, the Woman's Auxiliary Army Corps 
and any other persons employed on the Lines of 
Communication. These Stores are always attached 
to the Base or the Advanced Supply Depots. They 
are literally what the word implies — a Store, with 
counters, shelves for goods, bins for vegetables and 
a fresh meat department, presided over by men 
who were butchers in civil life. The establishments 
have regular hours for doing business, the usual 
time of issue being during the forenoon, when the 
men from the unit's quartermaster detail come with 
their sacks (if a small force is to be fed), or motor 
trucks if the camp is large, for supplies for the 
next day. 

Let us see how this works. Assume that one 
hundred men of the Army Service Corps attached 
to a Base Depot need food for Wednesday. A cor- 
poral and a detail of privates comes the day before 
in a motor truck to the Detail Issue Store with 
what is called an Indent for Rations. This is a 
printed form (used throughout the British Armies) 
constituting a formal Demand for supplies. It 
contains the name of the unit, its location, the num- 
ber of rations required, the specific list of troops, 
officers and men to be fed, the kind of animals em- 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 101 

ployed, the fuel and light required and rum and 
tobacco needed. 

The Corporal hands the Indent to the Chief 
Issuing Clerk, who details one or more men, as the 
quantity requires, to assemble the supplies. The In- 
dent for Rations is issued in duplicate. One of 
these is signed by the Issuing Clerk, and is returned 
to the Unit as a voucher. The other, signed by the 
receiving soldier, becomes the Store's memorandum 
of issue. 

Where the Unit to be supplied is very large the 
Indent is handed in the day before, and the sup- 
plies assembled during the afternoon. When the 
Corporal and his detail come the next morning he 
merely gives the name of the Unit and everything 
is ready for him. 

These Detail Issue Stores vary in size and scope. 
Some only issue to fifty men, while others carry 
rations for sixty thousand. One detail in connec- 
tion with them is of unique interest. Since all the 
stores carry rum in stock, it is necessary to protect 
it from the ever-present thirst of the soldier. The 
cases of rum are never marked with the name of 
their real contents. They are stamped with a secret 
mark, which is changed from time to time and 
only known to the officers and sergeants in charge. 

We are ready to start on the first lap of the 
journey of the food to the front. Our objective 
point is the Advanced Base Supply Depot. Behind 
us at the Base ports we have left the din of the 



102 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

docks, the bustle of unloading, the spectacle of the 
busy hangar — the whole humming round of pack- 
ing and unpacking. As we go forward into the 
Domain of Distribution we find that with army 
supplies life is just one repacking after another. 
But every cycle of it has such a definite place in 
a definite system that no time or labour is lost. 

An Advanced Base Supply Depot is the place 
where the bulk trains are unloaded and the freight 
reloaded into sectional trains that then go on to the 
front to supply the armies in action. The unit of 
supply for distribution to the front is a Division, 
which, at full strength, is 20,000 men and 5,800 
nurses. This is why the trains that go up to the 
fighting line are called Standard Divisional Pack 
Train. Each train carries enough food to supply 
two complete Divisions for a day. 

The average number of trains loaded daily at an 
Advanced Depot is twenty-one, which means that 
the normal establishment sends up food every 
twenty-four hours for 840,000 men. During the 
temporary breakdown of one of the northern ports 
a certain Advanced Base Supply Depot had to take 
over the work of another similar station, and for 
two months it fed 1,300,000 men every day. 

You cannot explain the work of an Advanced 
Base Supply Depot, however, without also explain- 
ing the functions of a Regulating Station. These 
two establishments are affinities. One is absolutely 
necessary to the other. The reason is that the Divi- 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 103 

sional Pack Trains are only made up in part at the 
Advanced Base Supply Depots, where the groceries 
are packed and completed at the Regulating Sta- 
tion, where, as you have already seen, the bulk pet- 
rol, forage, fuel and meat trains arrive direct from 
the Base Supply Depot. Each bulk train contrib- 
utes its quota to the Divisional Pack Trains. When 
the latter leaves the Regulating Station it has its 
full, authorised quantity of supplies for the two 
Divisions it feeds. This means that it carries food 
of all kinds, including meat, fuel, forage, petrol, 
medical comforts, small ordnance stores, disinfec- 
tants and a postal car, because letters are almost as 
welcome as things to eat. 

The moment you touch the trains you encounter 
another one of the compact organisations whose 
work helps to make up the sum total of army sup- 
ply in France. Without adequate steam transporta- 
tion facilities nothing could be accomplished. The 
British have had to take over, reorganise and regal- 
vanise the whole railway system of Northern 
France. All operations are under the control of a 
Director General of Transportation. General W. 
A. Nash, a seasoned railroad man, who has under 
him an army of trained railroad men from all parts 
of the Empire. This organisation was literally put 
on the map by that remarkable individual, Sir Eric 
Geddes, who has become England's Handy Man for 
all jobs, and who is now First Lord of the Ad- 
miralty. 



104 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

From a chateau from "G. H. Q." General Nash 
runs the trains from Base to Rail Head. All the 
lines are subject to army control. It is just as if 
the New York Central, the Pennsylvania, the Read- 
ing, the Baltimore and Ohio, the Erie and the New 
York, New Haven and Hartford had all been mob- 
ilised for army work, and were under the direction 
of the War Department at Washington. In order 
to haul the immense quantity of supplies hundreds 
of engines have been brought over from England 
and Canada. They are all marked R. O. D., which 
means Railroad Operating Department. Thousands 
of freight cars have been commandeered from 
every line in England. They are stamped "W. D." 
which means War Department, and also show a 
white arrow which is the symbol throughout the 
War Zone of that mighty organisation. 

Some notion of the scope of army railway opera- 
tions in France is obtained when I say that the 
average daily number of trains operated is 220 and 
that the number of loaded cars conveyed each 
week is 35,000. These are standard gauge trains. 
The British Government also operates hundreds of 
miles of so-called light or narrow gauge railways, 
which often run almost up to the trenches. They 
carry food, ammunition, engineer's stores, broken 
stone and other material for road making, and 
trench supports, both wood and iron. 

The system in operation at an Advanced Base 
Supply Depot is a model of time and labour saving. 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 105 

All goods are loaded and unloaded on what we 
would call a freight shed, flanked by railway tracks. 
The incoming bulk train stops on the track outside 
the shed and its groceries are loaded onto the plat- 
form, where each kind of commodity has a section 
or Block, which is numbered. Each block holds 
thirty days' supply of that particular commodity for 
one Division. Let us say that Sugar Block, for 
example, is Number Six. All trucks loaded with 
sugar therefore are stopped opposite this Block. 

On the other side of the platform are the empty 
freight cars of the Divisional Park Train. Its sugar 
truck is put alongside Block Six. Thus only two 
operations are required to unload the sugar from 
the bulk train and get it into the sugar truck of the 
Divisional Pack Train. The same is followed with 
all commodities. 

Perishable supplies are kept in the shed. Just 
beyond the tracks where the Divisional Train un- 
loads is a huge open platform where non-perish- 
able goods like canned goods are kept. This is un- 
loaded in bulk and piled up in numbered Blocks. 
The performance at the shed is repeated here; that 
is, cars are matched to Blocks. It would be difficult 
to find anywhere a system simpler than the one I 
have here tried to explain. 

Each train has a Loading Officer, who gets each 
morning a long form filled out with the necessary 
articles to be packed. After the train is loaded he 
signs the form which is checked in turn by a Check- 



106 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

ing Officer and it becomes part of the permanent 
record of the transaction. At the Advanced Base 
Supply Depot each Division supplied gets a number. 
If a train steams out with 83 on its trucks it means 
that this is the number of the Division whose food 
it carries. When it gets to the Regulating Station 
a corresponding group of freight cars bearing this 
same number are switched on behind and the Divi- 
sional Pack Train, now complete, goes up the line 
to Rail Head. 

With this Divisional Pack Train goes a series of 
Waybills. One of these is signed by the Rail Head 
Supply Officer, who sends it back to the Advanced 
Base Supply Depot as a receipt for the goods. An- 
other duplicate is kept by him for his stock records. 
Still a third remains behind at the Depot. 

Go to a Regulating Station — it may be five or 
thirty miles from the Advanced Base Suppy Depot 
— and you will find yourself in a maze of ceaseless 
traffic. Day and night scores of trains come and 
go, hauled by nervous puffy engines. On the net- 
work of tracks — called the Triage — everything 
seems to be in confusion, but as a matter of fact, 
it is all part of a perfectly attuned system. At every 
Regulating Station the Traffic Manager sits at his 
desk with a huge blackboard before him, on which 
every incoming and outgoing train is marked. Al- 
though he may wear the uniform of a captain or 
major, it is purely a temporary rank. Before the 
war he was an operating official on the London and 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 107 

Northwestern or the Northeastern or some other 
great English railway. He knows his job. 

At these stations trains are literally regulated. 
Hence the title. Every Traffic Manager in charge 
keeps what he calls Plus and Minus Books. If an 
extra sugar or tinned meat or gasolene car comes 
up it is registered in the Plus Book. If by any 
chance a sectional Pack Train arrives with a car 
short it is recorded in the 'Minus Book. What is 
more important the gap in the train is at once filled 
and without delay from the extra loaded cars that 
are kept on what is known as the Surplus Track. 

A complete set of Divisional Pack Trains is 
handled every twenty- four hours. I mean by this 
that beginning at sunset each evening the battalions 
of trains begin to steam away from the Regulation 
Station up to the Rail Head where they are sched- 
uled to arrive at dawn. Just as soon as one group 
of these trains leaves the station another install- 
ment of bulk and partly-packed trains begins to 
arrive. It is an endless round of traffic. 

No train returns from Rail Head empty. It 
brings back clothing, shoes, guns, ammunition and 
engineering stores to be salvaged or renewed. 

When you reach the Rail Head you are in the 
Zone of the Armies. You have gone as far as the 
railway dares to go. Indeed more than one Divi- 
sional Pack Train has arrived at its destination to 
be met by an avalanche of shells and smashed to 
bits. From this time on you are up against danger 



io8 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

and death; the whole system of subsistence is ex- 
posed to a hundred hazards. 

Yet despite every difficulty that besets the Lines 
of Food Communication the accounting and super- 
vision go right on. The Rail Head Supply Officer 
keeps a Daily Stock Sheet, upon which he enters 
the supplies he receives from the Divisional Pack 
Trains, and deducts the Issues that he makes. 

The Rail Head may be the shattered railway sta- 
tion of a ruined French town or an improvised open 
air freight yard. The steel rail follows the ad- 
vancing armies. What was the scene of a bloody 
battle one month may be an important railway dis- 
tributing point the next. 

At the Rail Head a Reserve is kept on hand to 
meet emergencies. Wherever you go in the whole 
scheme of British supply you find the Reserve, 
which is the bulwark against breakdown in trans- 
port. This Rail Head Reserve is renewed every 
month because some of the goods is likely to spoil. 
It is kept under canvas which is heavily camou- 
flaged. 

The active supplies which arrive every morning 
are loaded into squadrons of motor trucks, techni- 
cally called the Divisional Supply Column, which 
hauls the supplies to the Refilling Point. Now you 
encounter Mechanical Transport for the first time 
as an active accessory of the Armies of the field. 
Frequently it must do all its work at night because 



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FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 109 

it is often the target of the long-range German guns 
and the aeroplane. 

The Refilling Point marks the last stage of Me- 
chanical Transport. As the danger becomes greater 
and you get nearer to the fighting the means of food 
conveyance must adapt themselves to the perils of 
the situation. The roads are now so bad that even 
if there were no shells flying about a three-ton 
motor truck could never get through. The army 
prop becomes the horse and the mule. Henceforth 
and up to the time the food is actually delivered to 
the fighting units, it is conveyed by the Divisional 
Train which is Horse Transport. A Divisional 
Train consists of 455 men, 375 animals and 198 
wagons. 

With the Horse Transport you get the really 
spectacular contact with the firing line. Day and 
night it is almost constantly under fire. A German 
gunner would rather "pot" a food column than a 
trench because it works a greater hardship. I have 
seen the roads strewn with the debris of wrecked 
Supply wagons and black with the bodies of dead 
horses. More than 200,000 horses have been killed 
in France alone since the war began. Most of 
them were in the Transport because very little 
cavalry has been employed. 

At the unit, which is usually a battalion, the food 
is unloaded from the wagons and taken in charge 
by the Battalion Quartermaster, who divides it into 
five lots, one for Headquarters and one for each 



no THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

of the four companies. In the company the Quar- 
termaster Sergeant puts it up in sacks and gives it to 
carrying parties who convey it to the trenches. 

The manner of cooking depends upon the stage 
of righting. The food is sometimes cooked behind 
the lines and carried up at night by hand in "dixies" 
or large food containers. It may be cooked in the 
Communication Trench or in the Front Trench 
itself. The main essential is that the Horse Trans- 
port delivers the supplies to the Battalion and the 
unit must do the rest as the circumstance of war 
dictates. 

I made a journey last autumn from a Rail Head 
to the trenches. It was in the historic valley that 
British valour has glorified into one of the supreme 
and spectacular spots of the war, where half a dozen 
Gettysburgs have been fought and won since Haig 
began his victorious onward sweep. On either side 
flowed the rivers that will have imperishable names, 
for the Ancre and the Somme are part of the agony 
and sacrifice of the great struggle. 

Six months before I had seen that same region 
white with snow, yet blazing with death. Two 
mighty armies were locked in a terrific struggle. 
The hillsides were gashed with trenches, the roads 
blocked with ammunition convoys. Everything was 
dedicated to destruction. 

When I went back the British advance had left 
this one-time battle ground far behind. Where the 
big guns had roared was now a Refilling Point. 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH in 

Not many miles to the rear in the little city that 
vies with Ypres as the theatre of heroic endeavour 
a Rail Head had been established in the wrecked 
railway station. Motor trucks were lined up at the 
platform for their daily supplies, mountains of for- 
age towered in the public square now a mass of 
wreckage ; in the ruins of the houses where once the 
citizens smoked and lived their uneventful lives 
Royal Engineers were rearing stables to protect the 
supply of horses from the rigours of the winter so 
near at hand. A Community of Supply had sud- 
denly sprung up amid a wanton waste. There was 
still a suggestion of close proximity to war in the 
boom of the far-away guns but that was all. 

The valley beyond was a flower garden. The fur- 
rowed hillsides blazed with poppies; the shell holes 
were rippling pools of yellow mustard plant. Nature 
had "come back." Only the men sleeping in the 
graves by the roadside would never return. 

To return to practical details, the question that 
the average man would ask at this point is: How 
does the Advanced Base Supply Depot or the Rail 
Head Supply Officer or the Refilling Point Officer 
know just how much food and fuel to carry? With 
shells shrieking all over the place an excess supply 
would invite unnecessary loss. Again, no chances 
can be taken in underestimating the needs of the 
men fighting for their lives. 

You have only to look a little further into the 
supply system to see how it is done. Every one 



ii2 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

of the five British armies in the field has a Deputy- 
Assistant Quartermaster General and a Deputy Di- 
rector of Supply and Transport. The latter is the 
link between the Demands of the army on the one 
hand and the Source of Supply on the other. 

A battalion up front makes its Demands for sup- 
plies on the Brigade Supply Officer, who in turn 
"Demands," as the phrase goes, on the Senior Sup- 
ply Officer, who is the Supply Officer of the Divi- 
sion. He renders a Consolidated Demand on the 
Rail Head Supply Officer. If the Division is re- 
cruited to full strength it means that he wants daily 
supplies for 20,000 men and 5,800 horses. 

The Rail Head Supply Officer thereupon issues 
in accordance with this request from the stores he 
receives each day from the Divisional Pack Train. 
He sends a "Daily Wire of Feeding Strength and 
Reserve" to the Deputy Director of Supplies and 
Transport with the Army, who makes a formal 
Demand for all the supplies needed on the Ad- 
vanced Base Supply Depot. In other words, the 
battalion in the trenches ultimately clears its needs 
through the Headquarters of the army to which it 
is attached. 

What happens when Divisions change ? Brigades 
are being constantly shifted from service in the 
trenches to Rest Camps in the rear. They usually 
come down very much depleted in ranks and do not 
require as much food as the fresh brigade that has 
just gone up to relieve them. It is up to the Senior 




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FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 113 

Supply Officer to immediately acquaint the Deputy 
Director of Supply and Transport with the change 
so that it can be noted in the issue of supplies. 

Let us assume that the Division has lost 10,000 
men and that its Transport is all shot to pieces, hav- 
ing lost 2,800 animals. This means that it goes 
back to rest with 10,000 men and 3,000 animals. 

The Senior Supply Officer simply wires : "X Divi- 
sion feeding strength, men ten thousand, animals 
three thousand/' and the Advanced Base Supply 
Depot immediately adjusts its Pack Train to meet 
the change in needs. 

A specific report is made on all supplies salvaged 
or captured from the enemy. If these are fit for 
consumption they are used up at once and the units 
consuming them under-draw on their supplies from 
the Base. 

Every possible precaution is taken against food 
disaster. There is always five days' reserve for 
each Division at Rail Head and a reserve at the 
Horse Reserve Park, where the extra Horse Trans- 
port is kept to renew horses. These reserves, to- 
gether with the Iron Rations of the men, constitutes 
a sufficient safeguard against a breakdown in train 
service which, at the worst, would not last more 
than three or four days. 

Now you can see why Tommy never misses a 
meal. 

For the last I have kept the chapter in the story 
of Army Supply which from the viewpoint of 



H4 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

American business is more important perhaps than 
any other. It concerns the check on waste, which 
extends well up into the fighting area. Aside from 
the fact that it saves the British Government mil^ 
lions of dollars every year it points the way to a 
tremendous conservation of financial and material 
resources in connection with our own military oper- 
ations abroad. It has a worldwide significance be- 
cause it touches the two universal institutions — 
human nature and the pocketbook. 

During a great war and while the nation is 
thrilled and touched by the news of the front no 
one questions the cost. Everybody has some kind 
of stake in the struggle. But when the war is over 
and the fixed charges on glory in the shape of taxes 
and other demands must be met with irritating and 
costly regularity, the unpatriotic and unromantic 
question arises: "Where did all that money go?" 

Scandal lifts its fearsome head. Boards of In- 
quiry become the habit and good names are be- 
smirched. It is not war that constitutes the grave- 
yard of reputation, but the investigation that comes 
afterward. 

The British Army is taking no chances on be- 
coming the target for the scandal-monger when 
peace sheathes the sword. A remarkable system 
of auditing and accounting has been in operation 
from the first day of war that will show the British 
taxpayer just where every penny of his money has 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 115 

gance. As with Corporations the greatest of these 
is Publicity. 

There are two separate and distinct curbs on 
army waste. One operates under the supervision 
of the Financial Adviser of the War Office, who 
must render an accounting to Parliament for all 
war expenditures, and who has a complete work- 
ing organisation in the field which deals entirely 
with finance. The other is the Investigation De- 
partment under the control of the Director of Sup- 
ply at General Headquarters, which follows up all 
supplies and sees that the issue of food does not ex- 
ceed actual consumption. 

Take the Financial Supervision first. In a build- 
ing in a certain French town not a great distance 
behind the lines is a complete Financial Bureau in 
charge of a Brigadier General, who before the war 
was specially trained in the requirements of Treas- 
ury audit and who is in the English Civil Service. 
The record of every dollar that the Army spends in 
France (and there is a very large field expenditure) 
goes through his office. The voucher for each ton 
of biscuits that lands in France must pass his 
scrutiny and show that the food is either in stock or 
eaten. 

Every day — as General Pershing has already 
learned to his cost — some sort of claim is made by 
the French for damages. If a pig is run over by 
a motor truck the peasant immediately sends in a 
claim for a thousand francs. The usual French 



n6 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

claim of this kind ranges from ten to twenty times 
the real value of the damaged goods. Every pig 
destroyed, according to the owner, could do every- 
thing but talk. All these claims must be investi- 
gated and paid. Likewise the immense bills for bil- 
leting must be audited. 

Everything is investigated. If an officers car is 
smashed up a Board of Inquiry sits on the case to 
find out if the accident was due to carelessness or 
the natural hazards of congested road traffic in the 
war zone. If it is proved that the accident was 
due to carelessness the officer is required to pay the 
damages; if it was unavoidable it is "Written off" 
and marked "To be borne by the public," which 
means that John Bull foots the bill. 

These Boards of Inquiry, which are composed 
of officers, deal with an immense variety of emer- 
gencies. It may be a leakage of gasolene due to 
rough handling or defective packing; an unvouch- 
ered expenditure by a Purchasing Agent; the loss 
of horse blankets in transit from the Ordnance Base 
Depot in France to the Advanced Horse Transport 
Depot, or the destruction of Ordnance stores due 
to fire. Witnesses are examined, a complete report 
is made in each case and responsibility fixed. 

As soon as it was evident that stationary or 
trench warfare was likely to continue in France for 
a long time it became necessary for the British 
Army to purchase as much food and forage in 
France as possible. For one thing it saves tonnage 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 117 

from England and elsewhere. A Central Purchas- 
ing Board was established by the Financial De- 
partment to deal with the field buying which is made 
by officers, known as Requisitioning Officers, who 
are attached to each brigade. If these Officers were 
permitted to buy indiscriminately the competition 
between them would immediately raise the prices 
of all commodities. To prevent this there is a sepa- 
rate Purchasing Board with each army. Each Board 
gets a regular schedule of prices to be paid — it is 
changed from time to time to meet market condi- 
tions — and if the French farmer or shopkeeper does 
not accept them the goods is ordered from home. 
This is the guarantee against gouging. 

The whole operation of this Financial Depart- 
ment in the field goes to show that although Great 
Britain spends $35,000,000 a day on the war a 
suspicious item of five dollars is rigidly scrutinised. 
The Watch Dog of the British Treasury is always 
on the job. 

But this censorship of expenditure is merely the 
beginning of real supply auditing which constitutes 
the principal work of the Investigation Department. 
Here you have the branch of the Business of War 
which corresponds with the Accounting Department 
of a business. Its headquarters — located at a bus- 
tling French town where an immense number of 
British supply trains are regulated every day—are 
just like the offices of a large firm of expert ac- 
countants. The duties are almost the same. The 



n8 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

only difference is that the men of the "I. D." — as 
the Investigation end is known — wear uniforms, are 
subject to military discipline and deal with the big- 
gest business in the world. Most of these officers, 
I might add, were actuaries, accountants and book- 
keepers in civil life. At their head is a regular 
officer, Colonel C. M. Ryan, a Deputy Director of 
Supplies, who, without the slightest previous busi- 
ness experience, runs the whole show just as if he 
had been trained in trade. 

The Investigation Department was started in De- 
cember, 1 914. Originally its operations were con- 
fined to the Base and Advanced Supply Depots. It 
had and still has a representative at every Base 
Depot who checks up the receipts and issues of sup- 
plies and acts as Auditing Officer. Losses of sup- 
plies from theft, over-issue or On the road have to 
be accounted for. A monthly stock taking was en- 
forced and every discrepancy thoroughly investi- 
gated. This strict supervision not only means a large 
financial saving but is of distinct military value be- 
cause it compels all the Depots to keep their stocks 
ship-shape. 

In view of the large number of supply trains that 
shunt back and forth every day it is natural that 
freight cars should be lost. All these are traced 
by the Investigating Department. During last July 
199 loaded trucks, lost in transit, were run down 
and their freight restored. 

During the summer of 191 5 General Carter said 



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COL. C. M. RYAN (LEFT) AND THE AUTHOR 

Colonel Rvan is head of the Investigation Department in the 

Field 



FROM SHIP TO TRENCH 119 

to himself: "Why not extend the operations of the 
Investigation Department into the army areas? An 
immense amount of supplies in the field of fighting 
is practically unaccounted for. There is not the 
slightest reason why supervision should not extend 
to the field kitchen.' ' 

Up to this time the general principle laid down by 
the War Office was that there shall be no account- 
ing for supplies after it left the Advanced Supply 
Depot. Demands for food were made on scraps 
of paper and the rudest sort of Indents while the 
certificate of Issue and Receipt was often scribbled 
on the back. Naturally there was great waste. 

General Carter's suggestion was adopted by the 
Quartermaster General to all the Forces and an 
Administrative Control was established which lit- 
erally represents the last word in Supply Super- 
vision because it follows the goods up to the point 
of consumption. 

Forms were standardised and the whole system 
of "Demanding" by troops at the front which I 
have described earlier in this chapter was put into 
effect. The haphazard methods disappeared and the 
whole process put on a definite business basis. 

Over all this unending procession of Supply the 
Investigation Department keeps vigilant watch. It 
gets a duplicate of every Indent for Rations — 55,000 
of these come in each week alone — a copy of every 
receipt for supplies delivered and a carbon of each 
Waybill used throughout the traffic system. Into 



120 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

its office pours a flood of documents that record 
every transaction that relates to the issue of food 
to the British Armies in France. 

The main job, therefore, of the Investigation De- 
partment is to reconcile Issue with Receipt. Each 
commodity issued must register one hundred per 
cent, which means that every pound of it must be 
consumed or be in a Reserve. If there is a serious 
discrepancy the officers responsible are likely to be 
severely disciplined. 

So automatic has become the working of demand 
and supply that during the month that I spent with 
the British Armies the Reconciliation Percentage 
of twenty-three leading commodities did not vary 
more than one per cent in surplus or in shortage. 
In practically every case it was considerably less 
than one per cent. Over-issue, which always means 
waste, is eliminated. 

Thus the Business of War is more than a phrase. 
It is as efficient as it is destructive. 



V — The Miracle of Transport 

WHEN the real story of the Great War is 
written the technical experts will prob- 
ably call it a War of Artillery, but 
the men who have had to battle with the busi- 
ness of it will always know it as the War 
of Mechanical Transport. The whole marvellous 
Empire of the Motor has produced no great- 
er miracle than the achievement of the gasolene- 
propelled vehicle which has made possible the feed- 
ing and purveying of the enormous fighting hosts. 
Indeed, Supply and Transport are so closely re- 
lated that one cannot exist without the other. They 
are the real affinities of the service. 

Since an historic evening early in September, 
19 14, when General Gallieni's reserve army swept 
out of Paris in taxicabs, joined Joffre's forces, 
helped to deliver the crucial blow that blocked the 
Germans at the Marne and saved the capital, the 
automobile has been a constantly increasing factor 
in the waging of the war. In this particular case 
it provided the pivot on which the whole Allied 
Cause turned. If Paris had fallen then before Von 
Kluck's drive no man knows what might have hap- 
pened. The abused taxi earned its crown of glory 
that night. 

No phase of the British army organisation in the 

121 



122 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

field is of such vital significance to the United 
States as Mechanical Transport. Here you get the 
direct link with America because thousands of our 
cars of all kinds are in constant use in the War 
Zone. But more important than this is the tre- 
mendous lesson in standardisation both as to vehi- 
cles and their parts, that has been learned by the 
British after three years of costly and drastic ex- 
perience. By heeding this lesson we can save mil- 
lions of dollars to say nothing of infinite trouble. 
Simple and standardised Mechanical Transport is 
half the battle because it not only means adequate 
food supply but also guns, ammunition, aeroplanes 
and engineers' stores. 

Under the terrific pressure of army needs the 
utilitarian side of the motor, from cycle to five-ton 
truck, has been reorganised and given a rebirth of 
efficiency. Three years of war have advanced the 
industry more than ten years of peaceful investiga- 
tion. The results are of almost incalculable bene- 
fit to the entire business. They furnish one of the 
many stimulating examples of regeneration wrought 
out of monster destruction. 

Like the army it serves, British Mechanical 
Transport has developed from almost nothing into 
a mighty machine. Prior to this war the motor 
truck, as a practical aid to operations in the field, 
did not loom very large in the mobilisation plans. 
In the Boer War all the transport was drawn by 
horses, mules or oxen. In 1910 a few steam-pro- 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 123 

pelled trucks were introduced as experiments, but 
they were rather impracticable on account of their 
weight, slow speed and the inevitable difficulty of 
fuel supply in actual war. The Mechanical Trans- 
port was controlled by the Transport Branch of the 
War Office and consisted of a very small personnel 
and an equally limited number of vehicles. The 
War Office relied for the provision of motor trans- 
port in the event of the mobilisation of an Expedi- 
tionary Force on trucks already in use in civil work 
whose owners had been subsidised and who were, 
therefore, bound to turn over their equipment at 
the outbreak of war. For the expansion of the per- 
sonnel this plan depended upon the direct commis- 
sioning of experienced civilians for officers and the 
immediate enlistment of civilian drivers. No pro- 
vision was made for training men in discipline or 
military routine. Such was practically the main 
Mechanical Transport resource of the British Army 
before the war began. 

Under this scheme the mobilisation of motor 
units was entrusted to the Commanding Officers of 
the various ports of embarkation. These officers 
were provided with lists of the vehicles which were 
to mobilise at their depots. The owners of these 
vehicles were instructed by telegraph just where 
their trucks and cars would be required. For the 
provision of spare parts a system of subsidy, sim- 
ilar to that in vogue for the supply of complete 
vehicles, existed. Efforts were made to encourage 



124 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

manufacturers to standardise parts and fittings to 
as great an extent as possible. 

When the war crashed into civilisation this ar- 
rangement was not found entirely wanting. The 
trucks that first supplied Lord French's army were 
taken from trade. They went from shop, ware- 
house and factory to flat cars, were hauled to the 
southern ports and rushed to France. These scat- 
tered and impressed vehicles formed the nucleus 
of the immense fleet of transport comprising thou- 
sands of trucks, cars and motorcycles — 50,000,000 
pounds of equipment on rubber tires — that to-day 
makes up the Mechanical Transport of the British 
Armies in France alone. The transport in the 
other theatres of war augments this list consid- 
erably. 

As a matter of picturesque fact, however, the 
British Mechanical Transport in France on any kind 
of scale really began with that lumbering engine of 
peace, the London omnibus. At the outbreak of 
hostilities thousands of them were literally taken 
from the Strand, Piccadilly and other streets of the 
metropolis and shunted into the war area. They 
were used to convey the "Old Contemptibles," as 
the first immortal army that dashed to the relief 
of Belgium, was called. 

In connection with their advent in France oc- 
curred one of the most amusing incidents of the 
war. Since these 'buses were rushed from the high- 
ways of peace into the Zone of War they appeared 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 125 

on the French roads carrying all the advertising 
that had become familiar to the London population. 
The virtues of soaps, matches and safety razors 
were still extolled on their sides. At that time 
"Potash and Perlmutter," rendered into a play, was 
having its first big run at a well known London 
theatre. Nearly every London 'bus carried a huge 
sign 'which read: "See Totash and Perlmutter' at 
the Queen's Theatre." 

This injunction in huge letters burst upon the un- 
suspecting people of France. When the first line 
of 'buses filled with British Tommies swept up the 
road to Mons the French soldiers and civilians stood 
at attention on the roadside and yelled : 

"Vivent les Generates Potash et Perlmutter!" 

They thought that the names of the famous Jew- 
ish merchants were those of the British Generals 
in command of the Expeditionary Force. 

Soon after the outbreak of the war Mechanical 
Transport, or "M. T.," as it is known in the ser- 
vice, was detached from the Transport Branch of 
the War Office, entrusted to a separate branch of 
the Quartermaster General's staff and mated to the 
Department of Supply. This is why Major General 
A. R. Crofton Atkins is Director of Supply and 
Transport in the War Office organisation that feeds 
and provides the British Armies everywhere. 

With Mechanical Transport as with Supply, you 
find a closeknit system that is full brother to the 
whole process of provision that I have already ex- 



126 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

plained. It is just one more Branch of the stupend- 
ous Business of War, organised, sustained and 
operated on lines that would do credit to the most 
scientific of industrial institutions. 

Your knowledge of the institution of Supply now 
enables you to grasp at once the scope of the com- 
plete Mechanical Transport service. In England 
you find a perfect system of provision based on 
actual needs expressed in Demands sent in from 
France and the other war areas. In the field you 
encounter an interlocking chain of Base and Ad- 
vanced Depots; you see an unfailing process of 
Supply; you behold a field Repair Service that car- 
ries the work of maintenance and reconstruction 
almost up to the firing line; you marvel at the 
ceaseless flow of gasolene and you realise that the 
whole world of rubber has been drained for the 
millions of tires required. 

Again you have the parallel with trade, because 
this whole gasolene driven enterprise is operated 
just as if it were the annex of a private business 
that must be conducted at maximum productivity 
and with the minimum overhead cost. 

At the head of this business is Major General 
W. G. B. Boyce, Director of Transport of the Brit- 
ish Armies in France, who sits at his desk at Gen- 
eral Headquarters with his hand at the wheel of 
all Mechanical Transport in that field. Every day 
he knows just the number of trucks and cars that 
are in active service and their exact condition ; how 




Copyright by J. Russell & Sons, London. 

MAJOR GENERAL W. G. B. BOYCE 
Director of Transport of the British Armies in France 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 127 

many have been destroyed by enemy fire or acci- 
dent the day before; the exact state of all motor 
supply at all Depots, and what new vehicles are on 
their way to replenish the lost or damaged. In 
brief, the whole Mechanical Transport situation, 
through the agency of an almost infallible chain 
of intelligence is at his finger's end. In war knowl- 
edge is always power. 

General Boyce is a fine type of the clear-cut 
efficiency that you invariably discover in the high 
executive British Army places. Without technical 
knowledge of motors — I doubt if he knows how 
to run a car — he can detect the slightest deviation 
in the structure of the very technical organisation 
that he controls. It is instinct. One of his col- 
leagues said: "Boyce can smell out mistakes." I 
am quite sure that he could take charge of any huge 
motor plant in the United States and operate it 
successfully. Like his stalwart colleague, General 
E. E. Carter, who rules the Domain of Supply, he 
is a graduate and member in good standing of the 
Army Service Corps — a conspicuous figure in the 
Army Behind the Army. 

At the outset it might be well to impress the fact 
that Mechanical Transport in a great army to-day 
is much more than motor trucks and automobiles. 
It includes all ambulances not hauled by horses, 
motorcycles, the equipment of the tanks and the 
huge so-called Four Wheel Drives, which pull the 
big guns. These Drives are the monster limbers 



128 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

or tractors with caterpillar wheels. In the case of 
9.2 howitzers, 12-inch guns and larger calibres they 
are like travelling machine shops. All cannon from 
6-inch howitzers up come under the head of siege 
artillery and must be hauled by mechanical trans- 
port. Without motors they could not be used in 
the field. Now you can see why the gasolene engine 
has made the War of Artillery possible. 

Mechanical Transport also includes all the water 
wagons, which are as important to the sustenance 
as the food columns. Then, too, there is the tre- 
mendous task of providing spare parts, accessories 
and tires for all the different kinds of vehicles. 
Last, but not least, of Mechanical Transport re- 
sponsibilities is the maintenance of a continuous 
supply of the very life blood of all motor transport, 
which is gasolene, or petrol, as the British call it. 
The only section of gasolene transport not under 
General Boyce is the equipment of the Royal Flying 
Corps. This is because the aviation lorries, which 
is the English synonym for trucks, must be of spe- 
cial construction in order to carry complete aero- 
planes. 

All vehicles, their parts and accessories, must be 
provided from hundreds of factories in Great 
Britain and the United States, mobilised and 
manned in England, conveyed to France and other 
areas of war and kept going day and night behind 
the lines and under fire. Like the organisation of 
the Army Food Supply, it seems like an almost im- 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 129 

possible proposition, but it is all reduced to charts 
and diagrams, vitalised by an amazing administra- 
tive genius and made into an agency whose opera- 
tion is as simple as it is efficient. 

On a chart about three feet square, which hangs 
on the wall in General Boyce's Office at General 
Headquarters is a layout of the whole system from 
factory to field. At the bottom is Production, 
which may be factories in the United States or Eng- 
land. Next in succession come the Home Depots 
in England, where the mobilisation of transport, 
drivers and mechanics is effected. Beyond this 
lies France, where you go from the Base Mechan- 
ical Transport Depots to the Advanced Mechanical 
Transport Depots, past the Heavy Repair Shops 
and Tire Presses, up to the Mobile Work Shops 
in the field where the cars damaged by shell fire 
or wrecked on the roads in the zone of the armies 
come for repair. 

Everything on this chart is so comprehensive that 
it is like a tale told in words of one syllable. The 
English Depots are all in yellow, the Depots and 
shops on the Lines of Communication are blue, 
while the stations in the field are pink. On one 
side is a succession of compact texts which ex- 
plains the functions of every stage in the system. 
You can look at this chart and see at a glance just 
how the whole organisation of Mechanical Trans- 
port lives and has its being. With this bird's-eye 



130 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

view of operation in your mind you can now go 
info specific details. 

Let us first examine the Production End as it 
affects men and motors. The rank and file of Me- 
chanical Transport must, of necessity, be more 
skilled than any other branch of the Army Ser- 
vice Corps, from* which its entire personnel is 
drawn. All men who enter the army and who 
have had previous experience as chauffeurs are 
mobilised at once as drivers. But the number of 
trained volunteers and conscripts is unequal to the 
enormous demands of the Army Transport Service. 

Two huge Mechanical Transport Depots had to 
be established in England. At one of them the 
men are examined as to their qualifications. If 
a man says that he knows how to drive a truck 
he is immediately put on the seat of a five ton lorry 
and made to prove that he can deliver the goods. 
At the first of these depots the men are cross- 
examined, weeded out and equipped. They then 
proceed to the Training Depot, where the experi- 
enced chauflur is put through the paces with every 
form of army vehicle from truck to Four Wheel 
Drive. The green driver gets a complete course 
of technical instruction. No one is permitted to 
leave the Depot to serve as driver in the field until 
he can manage the biggest truck on a crowded road 
in the darkest night and can repair his engine un- 
der all sorts of disquieting conditions. 

The faculty in this Automobile College is com- 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 131 

posed of temporary officers who have been em- 
ployed in the great automobile factories of Eng- 
land and also hundreds of men from the technical 
staff of the London General Omnibus Company. 
Recruits who are unsuitable as motor drivers be- 
come loaders and packers and remain in the Army 
Service Corps. This Automobile School becomes 
the source of man power for the Mechanical Trans- 
port. The drain on this man power is very great 
because of the constant stream of new vehicles that 
pours from England into France and the steady 
losses in the field. 

Now we can turn to the vehicle end. Every week 
scores of trucks and cars arrive in England from 
America. Some of the equipment from the United 
States comes in the form of a chassis upon which 
a British body is erected. At the same time every 
automobile factory in the United Kingdom is work- 
ing day and night on army motor output. All 
these vehicles and cars are assembled in what is 
called a Vehicle Pool. Just as soon as Demands for 
trucks come by wire from France each vehicle is 
manned with a driver and an extra man from the 
Training Depot and sent on its way. 

These two men remain with their truck until 
they, or the truck, are destroyed. Each driver is 
required to keep a Log of his car. Into it he must 
record the amount of fuel he uses, the number 
of tires and spare parts he requisitions — in short, 
the whole story of what his vehicle does. 



132 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Every truck gets what is called a War Depart- 
ment number. The chassis also gets a number. 
These two numbers are permanently attached to 
the car and provide the means of identifying it 
throughout the army records. The truck or car 
and its numbers become part of an endless system 
of observation and accounting which continues un- 
til the vehicle goes into the scrap heap and is writ- 
ten off the books. Some of the lorries used by the 
First Expeditionary Force are still in service and 
it is interesting to add that they include some well 
known American makes. 

The vehicle is only one phase of the Production 
End in England. Near London is an immense 
spare part and tire Depot — the largest in the world. 
Within its walls seven million parts are "turned 
over" every year, yet there is a record of each one. 

How does the Production End know just what 
equipment to provide. I will now explain. 

Despite the immense scope and variety of the 
Mechanical Transport there is a definite allotment 
for every Branch of the Service. A Battery of 
six-inch howitzers, for example, is entitled to four 
Four Wheel Drives and fifteen trucks. It can have 
no more — no less. Eight of these trucks are used 
for ammunition, three for baggage, two for gun 
platforms, one for supplies and one for spare parts. 
Every one of these batteries is charged up with 
this mechanical equipment and must render an ac- 
counting. 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 133 

The same is true of the trucks of a Divisional 
Supply Column, which hauls the food from Rail 
Head to Refilling Point in the field, and the Am- 
munition Park which carries shells. Likewise every 
Base and Advanced Supply Depot has its quota 
of trucks and must maintain it. If this number 
falls below standard it must be renewed at once. 

Hence it is important for the Director of Trans- 
port to know what is technically called the Supply 
Situation every day. From every unit that uses 
motors of any kind he gets a report at "G. H. Q." 
He, therefore, knows precisely what he has on 
hand ; what destruction has been wrought and what 
Demands must be made upon reserves in France 
and upon the Vehicle Pools in England. 

Take the case of a Big Push, which usually 
plays havoc with Mechanical Transport. A heavy 
bombardment may destroy fifty trucks and forty 
Four Wheel Drives in a single day. A report of 
this loss is wired to the Director of Transport, 
who replaces the lost vehicles from the Reserve 
Park in the Field. He immediately makes a De- 
mand on England for enough Transport to fill 
up the gap in the Park. The Reserve Vehicle 
Park bears the same relation to Mechanical Trans- 
port that the Authorised Reserve bears to Food 
Provision. It is the bulwark against disaster, an 
automatic insurance against delays and break- 
downs. Throughout the whole organisation of 
Mechanical Transport you find that Supply and 



i 3 4 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Ordnance Stores history repeats itself. Nothing 
is permitted to remain a loss. Swift renewal is the 
watchword up and down the line. 

We can now cross to France and see how the 
whole Mechanical Transport Machine works. At 
once you find it linked up with the Supply and 
Ordnance organisation, for which it fetches and 
carries. In other words, it is part and parcel of 
the general provision geography of the whole war 
area. This means that the Base Mechanical Trans- 
port Depot on the Northern Line of Communica- 
tion is located in the chief Supply port of that Line 
and serves the armies in the area, while the South- 
ern Base Mechanical Transport Depot adjoins the 
Base Supply Depot of the Southern Line and 
serves the British Armies located in its zone. The 
organisation of both Base Mechanical Depots is 
practically the same, but each has its distinctive ele- 
ments of interest. Therefore, we will visit both. 

The Base Mechanical Transport Depot for the 
Northern Line is of particular concern to the United 
States because it supplies all the American cars 
used by the British armies. Go into its huge 
counting room — it looks precisely like the office of 
a great factory with its clicking typewriters, card 
indexes, ledger accounts, adding machines and other 
aids to business — and you will see on the dia- 
grams that hang on the wall the familiar names 
that have made American motor history and which 
are now geared up to the world automobile ma- 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 135 

chine. It makes the Yankee visitor feel that he is 
back home. 

Typical of the completeness of this Transport 
organisation is a large Blueprint which outlines the 
duties of every one of the many sections. If a 
supply clerk is required to make out triplicates of 
every Demand for a spare part that comes in it 
is indicated here. Everybody knows what is ex- 
pected of him. 

At one of these Bases you get a touch of the 
real human interest of the war. You see a crack 
motor designer who earns $15,000 in England 
making blueprints for a subaltern's pay. You find 
an automobile production engineer who set his own 
fees in peace times speeding up the supply output, 
content with the wage of a captain. Here, as else- 
where in the Army Service Corps, expert brain 
as well as brawn, is enlisted on the Army job. 

A Base Mechanical Supply Depot in its work plays 
many parts. It receives all the reinforcements — 
drivers and mechanics — for the field; it checks all 
the new vehicles that arrive from England; it has 
a school of instruction which gives the final inten- 
sive training to slightly deficient chauffeurs and it is 
the clearing house for all obsolete or wrecked-be- 
yond-repair vehicles. 

But the greatest of its functions is the issuance 
of all spare parts and tires. Now we come to the 
really difficult and complicated problem of all Me- 
chanical Transport — the one that is at once its 



136 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

bane and its salvation and the one, I might add, 
which points the greatest of all constructive morals 
for the Transport organisation of the Ameri- 
can Army now in the making. 

If you know anything about automobiles you 
know that any motor vehicle, whether it is limou- 
sine, touring car or truck is the sum of a great 
many so-called parts. In the case of one of the 
best known American motor trucks used in France 
there are exactly 1,140 parts. These parts may 
be as small as a nut or as large as an axle. Nearly 
every model of car or truck has its own particular 
set of parts or "spares" as they are known. It 
follows, therefore, that very few of these parts are 
interchangeable. You cannot renew X car with 
the spares of Y car. If you are dealing with the 
renewal and up-keep of a great many different 
makes you must provide a separate supply of spares 
for each make of car and also for every type of 
that make. 

Now if the British Army only used a few makes 
of cars and a few different types of these makes 
the renewal of spares would be a very simple busi- 
ness. But this, unfortunately, is not the case. Eng- 
land went to war almost overnight. As you already 
know, she had paid very little attention to the or- 
ganisation of her Mechanical Transport. There 
was no standardisation; in fact, no vehicles to 
standardise. The comparatively small group of 
cars commandeered for the First Expeditionary 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 137 

Force represented nearly a dozen different manu- 
facturers, each one with his own particular set 
of spare parts. 

War does not wait. The Army had to have 
hundreds of trucks at once. They were gathered 
in from every possible source. America was 
scoured for them with the result that before six 
months had passed there were more than fifty dif- 
ferent makes of car trucks and cars in France and 
in many instances half a dozen or more types of 
each make. In the case of one British truck ex- 
tensively used in the army there are exactly sixty- 
seven types, which call for more than four thou- 
sand different parts. 

Since the organisation of one Base Mechanical 
Transport Depot and up to the end of July, 19 17, 
210,000 items have been Demanded by units in the 
field alone. This does not mean the quantity of 
parts, but the number of items. If a unit Demands 
six pistons for a lorry and four connecting rods 
for a touring car the number of items recorded 
is not ten, but two. The number of articles in- 
volved therefore runs into the millions. 

The colossal task of transport renewal is now 
apparent. I could give you no better idea of the 
immense scope of this work than to say that at 
the Base Mechanical Transport Supply Depot of 
the Northern Line the number of different non- 
interchangeable parts that must be carried in stock 
is exactly 32,000, and that the total stock compris- 



138 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

ing these parts includes 1,700,000 articles. In one 
year this Depot supplied 2,500,000 spares, and 
this merely represents the spare demands of one 
Depot. Altogether the Supply Depots in France 
are required to keep on hand during the course of 
a year not less than 70,000 different non-inter- 
changeable spares and in some cases a great num- 
ber of each item. 

When you consider that there must be a sepa- 
rate bin for each kind of "spare" and a complete 
record for each part issued, that in a single day de- 
mands often come in from the Field for two or 
three hundred items, that every one of these me- 
chanical fixtures must be kept constantly renewed, 
you get some conception of the intricacies and the 
hardships that attend adequate and continuous sup- 
ply. Yet in the face of all these handicaps no 
truck or car has ever been required to wait more 
than twenty-four hours for its spares. It is a tre- 
mendous tribute to the efficiency of the whole Sup- 
ply organisation. 

Right here you get the significance of the lesson 
for America. By adopting a few standard trucks 
or cars with interchangeable parts at the very out- 
set of its war operations the United States Govern- 
ment can save itself infinite time, trouble and ex- 
pense in its Mechanical Transport. The same thing 
is. true of aeroplane engines. Standardisation — 
ancient middle name of American business — would 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 139 

work wonders in every branch of the Army that 
has to deal with a gasolene engine. 

The procedure of motor part renewal is very 
simple. The units in the field make their Demands 
through the Advanced Mechanical Transport Depot. 
If the part is not available from stock there it is 
secured from the Base. The Advanced Depot, how- 
ever, only renews the cars in the actual zones of the 
armies. The damaged cars that come to the so- 
called Heavy Repair Shops and the cars used in all 
the Base and Advanced Supply Depots are supplied 
from the Base Mechanical Transport Depots. 

In view of the immense number and variety of 
parts every precaution is taken to insure accuracy 
in the original Demand. Every Mechanical Trans- 
port Supply Officer in the field is required to pass 
an examination in a book called "The Demand for 
Spare Parts." This is the Bible of "M. T." re- 
newal. It contains a simple description of every part 
used, its purpose and how it is ordered. Specimen 
Demand Sheets are printed. It is as near fool and 
mistake-proof as possible. If the officer is order- 
ing a rear axle he is required to give the War De- 
partment number of the car and also the chassis 
number. These numbers are a part of the Me- 
chanical Transport Census, which is in the library 
of every Base and Advanced Mechanical Trans- 
port Depot. If the Demand is in any way obscure 
the Census is consulted, the exact car is located and 
the proper axle furnished. In this illustration I 



140 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

have used a very large part, but the same process 
would apply to the smallest item. Every spare and 
accessory has a number and it is ordered by that 
number. 

In order to reduce the possibility of error in spare 
supply to a, minimum and to enable the Demands 
for parts from the units in the field to be dealt 
with promptly by non-technical and perhaps event- 
ually by female labour (women are succeeding 
soldiers wherever possible in all Supply and Trans- 
port Depots in order to release fighting men), it 
has been found necessary to have a staff of techni- 
cally trained men to scrutinise every Demand to 
verify its accuracy and to insure that the parts 
shipped are suitable for the vehicle for which they 
are intended. The men who do this work are 
called Scrutineers. After deciding that the item de- 
manded can be legitimately supplied the Scrutineer 
marks its catalogue number on the Demand in red 
ink, which locates it at once in the Ledger or Stock 
Account of the Depot and enables the correct issue 
to be made in the Store. This is merely insurance 
against the possibility of mistakes in numbers. 

In order to assist the Scrutineer in his work 
Makers' catalogues of spare parts were formerly 
used, but these were found to be so inaccurate that 
what is called a Vocabulary has been compiled by 
each Depot for its use. This Vocabulary is one 
of the many distinct and permanent contributions 
that motor transport operation in the war is mak- 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 141 

ing to the development of the whole automobile 
business. Each Vocabulary is a sort of encyclo- 
pedia for the particular vehicle with which it deals. 
It contains a complete list of each and every part, 
its description, its part number, the quantity used 
per vehicle and finally the card number which iden- 
tifies it in the Depot Ledger account. 

These are the purely formal details. More im- 
portant is the information as to the interchange- 
ability of the various parts so that when a certain 
spare is out of stock another from another car can 
be issued and used in its place. Here is where 
the vocabulary will be of inestimable benefit to the 
motor manufacturer everywhere. It will teach the 
maker of a specific product facts about his own 
product that he never knew before. 

But the Vocabulary contains other information 
of value to the administration of Supply. As a 
result of many conferences between the technical 
officers of the various Depots the stocks of "spares" 
have been reduced to the fewest possible shapes and 
sizes and a drastic censorship of accessories and 
fittings established. This censorship deals with arti- 
cles which in time of war are considered as luxuries 
and therefore not permissible upon the ground of 
economy. Thus, only staff vehicles are permitted 
to have electric light equipment; others are denied 
mechanical horns; certain cars are not allowed 
speedometers and so on. 

In the same way it has been decreed that cer- 



142 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

tain parts must be made by the workshops for the. 
units in the field in order to keep down the de- 
mands on the parts manufacturers. This refers, of 
course, only to the simplest pieces. If an officer re- 
ports that he cannot make these parts he is told that 
he must or do without them. It makes for conser- 
vation. 

To sum up, the Vocabulary insures accuracy of 
issue, and permits no discrepancies. More than 
this, it is bringing about a standardisation of parts 
which is one of the greatest possible aids not only 
to the whole Army Transport Service, but to the 
automobile manufacturer generally. It is not say- 
ing too much to add that the ownership of one of 
these complete Vocabularies would be an invaluable 
asset to any motor maker. 

To return to "spares" issue again, all parts are 
kept in bins in warehouses as nearly fireproof as 
possible. Every precaution must be taken to pro- 
tect the stocks because in the case of those intend- 
ed for American cars they must travel across three 
thousand miles of submarine infested seas and any 
shortage would work a great hardship. 

Usually there is one shed or hangar for every 
two makes of cars. The sharpest check is kept on 
the state of supply. Hence alongside each bin 
hangs what is called a Provision Card. It is very 
much like the Tallyboard which is used to record 
the state of the stocks of supplies in the Base Sup- 
ply Depots. On this Provision Card is written the 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 143 

name of the part, the vehicle for which it is in- 
tended, the name of the maker, the horse power 
or type, and the part number in the catalogue of 
Stores. Under this is a specific list of Demands 
made up to date for this part, the number issued, 
the amount of stock on hand and the last order on 
the Home Depot in England for renewal of supply. 
An officer walking through the shed can thus ap- 
praise the supply situation in a very few minutes. 
Every Depot keeps a two months' supply of every 
item, the supply being based on the average monthly 
consumption of the three preceding months. 

Four vouchers are issued for every spare. One 
goes with the article itself, another remains behind 
at the Depot while the other two are sent by post 
to insure the arrival of some evidence of the ship- 
ment. One of these is signed by the consignee and 
returned to the Depot as a receipt. He keeps the 
other for his own records. 

One iron-clad rule of supply gives a side-light on 
the curb on waste. No new spare part is issued 
until the old part is tendered in exchange. If the 
part is destroyed a complete report on the manner 
of destruction is required. 

The whole business of spare supply has devel- 
oped a curious kink in human nature. During the 
past three years army experience has proved that 
every transport column has a tendency to hoard 
spare parts, which is a more or less unfair proce- 
dure because the whole Supply organisation is based 



144 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

on furnishing actual needs with a fair reserve for 
emergency. In order to prevent hoarding every 
unit is required to keep a record called Stock of 
Spare Parts, on which must be recorded the exact 
stock on hand, the unit requirements and any sur- 
plus. These sheets are inspected periodically by 
officers who not only scrutinise the sheet but com- 
pare the figures on it with the actual supply. The 
hoarder never gets away with it. 

After spare parts the most important supply de- 
tail is rubber tires, which are as essential to the 
wellbeing of Transport as gasolene. These tires 
must be safeguarded in every conceivable way. 
They are kept in darkened sheds because exposure 
to steady light has been found to be injurious. 

These tires are arranged in long racks that reach 
to the ceiling. If you desire some idea of the part 
that rubber is playing in the conduct of the war 
just inspect one of these warehouses. At one Brit- 
ish Base Mechanical Transport Depot I saw 44,000 
pneumatic tires, 40,000 inner tubes and 17,000 solid 
tires for trucks under one roof. The value of 
rubber tires at another Depot that I saw was 
$3,750,000, and this, you must remember, is merely 
one small item in the expense of Mechanical Trans- 
port. 

Compared with the issue of spare parts the sup- 
plying of tires is child's play. Each truck or car 
carries the usual number of extra tires, which tides 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 145 

them over any emergency. These portable stocks 
are renewed from time to time. 

In order to facilitate the work of renewing solid 
tires huge engine-driven tire presses are scattered 
throughout the army zone. Every truck driver has 
a map showing the location of these presses. If he 
breaks a tire on the road he makes a bee line for 
one of these first aid stations, has his tire pressed 
on and goes about his business. If, by any chance, 
he has no extra tire he can get one at the press, 
sign for it and it is charged up to the account of his 
unit. 

Spare parts are not the only troubles that beset 
the Mechanical Transport Depot Officer. The staff 
of one of these Depots is constantly being called 
upon to provide a variety of articles that tests in- 
genuity to the last degree. Unexpected needs de- 
velop, for example, in connection with the water 
supply. As you may well imagine, every pos- 
sible care must be exercised to safeguard the water 
that Tommy drinks. Before making one of their 
well known "victorious retreats" the German has 
a nasty habit of poisoning wells. Even if the Boche 
did not tamper with the water supply there is always 
danger from spies who seem to lurk everywhere. 
No officer therefore would think of letting his men 
drink out of a well in a new area without having 
it tested first. All this means that an immense 
amount of filtration and purification is necessary. 

One day last summer the Commanding Officer 



146 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

of a Base Mechanical Transport Depot got a hurry- 
up call for filter sand to be used in an active army 
area. His station had never before furnished such 
material, but he got on the job at once because army 
requisitions must be filled. He immediately detailed 
a temporary officer who happened to be a chemist 
and instructed him to comb the sea coast until he 
found a suitable sand. The officer located what he 
wanted, built a small drying furnace overnight and 
the improvised filter was on its way to the front 
the next morning. 

At the Base Mechanical Transport Depot for the 
Southern Line you find precisely the same organisa- 
tion as in the North. Here a whole new industry 
exists for the salvaging of battered spare parts. 
Since standardisation of parts cannot be completely 
effected, homogeneity of make is the next best thing. 
Hence all British makes of trucks and cars are sup- 
plied from the Southern Base, which permits a 
similar concentration for American cars at the 
Northern Depots. 

You cannot leave these Base Depots without find- 
ing out how that most essential of all motor sup- 
plies — gasolene — is handled. At every Base port is 
a huge so-called Petrol Installation. In these im- 
mense establishments you discover an efficiency, a 
co-ordination and a continuity of output that would 
do credit to the Standard Oil Company. In fact 
if you want to discover a real War Octopus just 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 147 

locate the gasolene end of Mechanical Transport 
and you will find it. 

The whole army petrol supply represents an in- 
teresting evolution. In the early period of the war 
all the canning and reshipping of the fuel was done 
at a certain English port. This was very easy when 
the monthly consumption was only 250,000 gallons. 
But as the armies grew and the fleets of Mechanical 
Transport expanded with them this system became 
impractical. France alone uses up 4,000,000 gal- 
lons of gasolene every month; Salonika 1,500,000, 
Egypt 90,000, while 1,000,000 gallons are necessary 
for the Home Forces. 

In 19 1 6 the zone of gasolene operations for 
France was shifted to that country. The tank ships 
now go there direct from the Far East and Ameri- 
ca, pipe their cargoes into huge storage tanks at 
the ports, whence it is piped in turn to the canneries. 

Formerly the standard petrol pack was a fifty 
gallon steel drum for the truck and a two gallon tin 
for the car. The drum, however, was found to be 
heavy and costly and a four-gallon can was substi- 
tuted. The two-gallon receptacle remains in use 
for the car. 

To keep the armies supplied with "gas" a tre- 
mendous industry had to be built up to meet the 
giant needs. At the beginning of the war most of 
the hundreds of thousands of cans were made in 
England and shipped to France. It required such 
a tonnage that the factories were literally trans- 



148 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

ported to the Base Mechanical Transport Depots. 
The swiftness of this transition illustrates how war 
has galvanised every activity that touches it. 

Here is an instance of genuine war-time hustle. 
On a certain Thursday night the largest of these 
gasolene can factories was operating in a town in 
England. Exactly nine days afterwards it was in 
full swing at a port in France. Every ton of ma- 
chinery had been moved in that time and set up 
without mishap. It moved into a series of aban- 
doned factories that had been carefully prepared 
for the change. Another can factory rose out of a 
marsh in exactly eight weeks. In this case wooden 
buildings had to be erected and the machinery as- 
sembled in England and shipped over. The con- 
struction and operation of these factories in France 
has released six ships that are now employed for 
other tonnage. 

These can factories work day and night. The 
operatives are English boys too young to fight, but 
who are a part of the army organisation and wear 
khaki. Just as soon as they reach military age they 
go into the fighting forces or the Army Service 
Corps. Meanwhile they are drilled and get a rudi- 
mentary idea of the military game. It keeps them fit. 
These boys are supplemented by thousands of 
French women who adapt themselves surprisingly 
well to the labour-saving machinery. 

The new cans go straight from the factory to the 
filling room, where women do all the work. From 



THE MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT 149 

eight to ten thousand cans are filled every day. 
Railway tracks run straight into these annexes and 
every day four solid trains of gasolene go up the 
line from each Depot. The standard railway 
freight car in France contains 1,200 gallons of fuel 
and each train averages 40 cars. Immense as this 
supply seems, it is just enough to keep the voracious 
engine of British Mechanical Transport tuned up 
and humming. 



VI — The Motor Under Fire 



WHEN you reach the Advanced Mechanical 
Transport Depot you are one step nearer 
to actual army operations. It is the link 
between Field and Base — the emergency clearing 
house through which a stream of supplies flows 
steadily. 

These Advanced Depots do a big business in 
spare parts. Each station keeps a month's supply 
of parts, tires, tools and accessories on hand. A 
simple and comprehensive system is in operation. 
As soon as a Demand for stores arrives the items 
are written on a card which has a number. This 
number becomes the permanent record of the order 
through all the successive stages of filling, packing 
and shipping. Thus any detail of it can be easily 
traced. A so-called Issue and Receipt Voucher is 
issued in duplicate for every order. One of these 
is retained by the consignor while the other is signed 
by the consignee at Rail Head, who returns it as a 
receipt for goods delivered. 

Every detail of work at an Advanced Mechanical 
Transport Depot contributes to the facility of 
operation. All supplies, for instance, are divided 
into two groups. One, marked A, includes equip- 
ment for British made cars, while the other, marked 
B, is devoted to the needs of American makes. 

150 



THE MOTOR UNDER FIRE 151 

When the Demand comes in it can immediately be 
stamped with one of these distinguishing letters. 

One detail will show the efficiency of the Ad- 
vanced station system. At the close of each day's 
business every item that has been Demanded and 
packed that day must be accounted for. It must 
either be shipped, packed, or in the shipping bin 
ready to go up in the sectional Pack Train the fol- 
lowing morning. If it is out of stock the Demand for 
it must be on the way to the Base Depot to be filled. 
In this way there is no "hang over" from day to 
day. The whole scheme of Mechanical Supply is 
based upon the idea that there must be no inter- 
ference with traffic. 

The issuance of parts and accessories, important 
as it is, constitutes but one phase of motor renewal. 
Every day trucks are smashed by shell fire, staff 
cars are disabled and motorcycles wrecked. If re- 
pairable the job must be done at once. To watch 
this operation you must come still further afield to 
what is known as the Heavy Repair Shop. These 
shops are located in towns that skirt the zones of 
the armies. They must be immune from shell fire 
although they are sometimes bombarded by aircraft. 
They are complete motor factories employing hun- 
dreds of men and women. 

The Heavy Repair Shops are all fed, in the main, 
from the Casualty Park. Here you are bang up 
against the ravage that war wreaks. A Casualty 
Park is precisely what its name implies. It is the 



152 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

place where the wrecks of war are dumped, sorted 
out, sent on to be repaired or consigned to the junk 
heap. 

Go to one of these Parks and in the heaped-up 
ruins of transport you get a vivid cross section of 
war. If these mute and gaping wounds could speak 
they would unfold a tale of sacrifice and death 
written in blood and agony on many an unsung 
field. 

A shell-shattered truck visualises the tragedy of 
a Divisional Supply Column that has ploughed 
through the night with its freight of food for the 
front and met disaster at a turn of the road. A rid- 
dled ambulance shows how an errand of succor was 
halted by the shrapnel that knows neither mercy nor 
charity. The twisted remnant of a motorcycle is 
eloquent tribute to the courage of a gallant des- 
patch rider who rushed to his doom on some hell- 
swept highway while the mangled staff car proves 
that the men who direct the fighting are in the 
turmoil themselves. This mud-spattered and san- 
guinary mass of wreckage is a grim and ghastly 
gallery that pictures the heroism of the Army Ser- 
vice Corps. 

In connection with these Casualty Parks is an 
interesting piece of war psychology. They are all 
screened from the highway so as to be invisible to 
the traffic that moves up and down. There is a 
definite reason for this. If an army chauffeur go- 
ing up to the front for the first time with a brand 



THE MOTOR UNDER FIRE 153 

new truck sees the horrible havoc that shells create 
his enthusiasm is not likely to be fired nor will his 
war spirit be increased. After seeing a lorry that 
has been put out of commission he is apt to say to 
himself: "What's the use of going up anyway?" 
It is precisely like the effect produced upon a man 
who goes into a hospital for an operation and is 
required to pass through the morgue on the way to 
his room. 

At the Casualty Parks every piece of wreckage 
is carefully inspected with a view to repair or sal- 
vage. If it is absolutely beyond rehabilitation all 
the available metal is extracted, melted down and 
used again, while the accessories, like lamps, go to 
the salvage shop to be restored. 

A repairable vehicle, no matter how badly bat- 
tered, goes without delay to the Heavy Repair 
Shop, whence it emerges like new. These shops, 
like every other industrial institution allied to Sup- 
ply and Transport, are marvels of organisation. 
When a truck, or rather the remnants of a truck, 
reach the establishment its history is written on a 
card just like the record of a patient is registered 
as soon as he enters a hospital. In fact the Heavy 
Repair Shop is the Hospital of Mechanical Trans- 
port. Every stage of vehicle reconstruction is noted, 
first in a Daily, and later in a Weekly Record of 
Repair. 

Through the medium of a friendly rivalry in out- 
put these shops are kept constantly speeded up. 



154 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

This is done by posting the records of the various 
shops where the men can see them. The results are 
very striking. When X shop learned one day last 
August that Y shop had overhauled and issued 67 
trucks in one week it got an extra move on itself 
and turned out 81 the next week. The shops are 
manned by skilled mechanics. The foremen are 
usually non-commissioned officers, who had similar 
jobs in automobile factories in England, while the 
superintendents and heads of departments are motor 
manufacturers or engineers. 

Closely associated with the largest Heavy Re- 
pair Shop in France is an institution which has 
tremendous meaning for the United States in her 
war preparation. I refer to the School for Officers. 
Here the aspirants for commissions in the Mechani- 
cal Transport Service get their training in a course 
of instruction that would do credit to the most 
thoroughly organised business university. 

There is every detail of a technical college. The 
lecture rooms are equipped with working models 
of every section of an automobile. You can see 
engines working and crank shafts turning. In one 
hall is a complete and labelled collection of every 
part and accessory that belongs to a motor car or 
a truck. Every class is limited to twenty men, 
which enables each member to ask all the questions 
he wants to ask and to be carefully cross-examined 
in turn. 

Each applicant for a commission must pass an 



THE MOTOR UNDER FIRE 155 

oral and written examination and is also required 
to give a demonstration of his ability to run a car 
or truck under actual traffic conditions in the war 
zone. For one thing he is required to operate a five 
ton truck on the road at night with huge caterpillar 
tractors snorting all around him and making things 
highly uncomfortable for the driver. His gear is 
tangled up by mechanical experts and he is made 
to straighten it out and repair it within a given 
time. Clad in overalls, he is put at a forge to learn 
exactly how castings are made. He must take a 
hand at assembling a car and do his bit in the engine 
room. This is why the School of Instruction is lo- 
cated near a Heavy Repair Shop, where there are 
excellent facilities to study the making and the re- 
making of all types of Mechanical Transport from 
motorcycles to Four Wheel Drives. 

The commissioned ranks of Mechanical Trans- 
port draw to a considerable extent upon men who 
have had to work with their hands all their lives. 
The moment they get commissions they are consid- 
ered to be "Officers and Gentlemen." They must 
be prepared to meet the responsibilities of their new 
social station. Hence they are polished off with a 
course in etiquette and deportment. 

Just as soon as a truck or car is completely over- 
hauled it is sent to what is known as the Reserve 
Vehicle Park, which bears the same relation to 
France or the field anywhere that the Vehicle Pool 
does to England. In other words, it is the great 



156 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Reserve Store that fills the gaps made by enemy 
shells, accidents, breakdowns or general wear and 
tear. It has two sources of supply — one the re- 
paired vehicle from the Heavy Repair Shop, as you 
have already seen, and the other the new vehicle 
which comes to the Base Mechanical Transport 
Depot which receives all equipment as it arrives 
from England. 

To see one of these Reserve Parks is to get an 
unforgettable impression of the scope of Mechani- 
cal Transport in the war. Not even the seemingly 
endless procession of supply and ammunition trains 
rattling along the roads gives you such an idea of 
the magnitude of the Army Transport world on 
tires. At one Park I saw 1,400 vehicles which in- 
cluded 1,000 trucks and 300 open and closed cars. 
The rest were ambulances. They were all parked 
in long lines that made a noble and really inspiring 
array with each vehicle freshly painted, its brass 
gleaming like a mirror in the autumn sunlight. As 
I looked at those shining acres I realised that before 
many weeks elapsed the paint would cease to glisten, 
there would be dents in the engine armour, and 
more than one vehicle that now stood so proudly 
would be in splinters by the roadside or patients in 
the Repair Hospital. 

There is practically no bookkeeping at a Reserve 
Vehicle Park, nor is it necessary. When a car is 
received a record of it is made on a card, which 
becomes part of what is called a Live Index. At 



THE MOTOR UNDER FIRE 157 

the same time it is chalked up on a huge blackboard. 
This blackboard enables the Commanding Officer of 
the Park to see at a glance just what stock he has 
on hand. When a Demand for Trucks or cars 
comes in he can fill it at once. Just as soon as the 
car goes out the date of departure and destination 
are registered on its card, which is now transferred 
to another index called Demand Index. 

Perhaps you are wondering about the human 
equipment of these cars. This is automatic be- 
cause, as I explained earlier, the moment a truck 
leaves England it carries with it a driver and an 
extra man. These two men stick to the car no mat- 
ter where it goes. If a car is laid up at the Heavy 
Repair Shop they are required to make themselves 
useful about the factory. At the Vehicle Park they 
must do likewise. They are required to keep the 
cars in perfect order so that the entire Reserve Sup- 
ply can be moved on half an hour's notice. This 
means that every truck and car has its gasolene tank 
and extra tins filled, its tools in perfect order and 
every accessory intact. A turn of the crank is all 
that is needed to put it in commission. 

I saw an extraordinary demonstration of the up- 
to-the-minute fitness of the vehicles at a certain 
Reserve Park. Fire, of course, is one of the great 
hazards and every possible precaution is taken 
against such disaster. For my benefit a fire drill 
was given one afternoon. The Commanding Officer 
asked me to indicate a vehicle that would be the 



158 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

basis for the alarm. I selected a three ton truck 
in the middle of a line of sixty. These trucks faced 
one way, while backed up against them were sixty 
more trucks facing the other. In all directions ex- 
tended lanes of every type of motor car used in the 
army. I put a can in front of the truck indicated 
and the officer rang the fire alarm without any pre- 
vious warning to the men. 

In less than three minutes after that bell sounded 
the truck in question was out on the roadside and a 
sufficient gap had been made in the two lines of 
cars to prevent any spread of flames had it been 
impossible to remove the car that was supposed to 
be on fire. It would have been absolutely isolated. 
Every man at the Park had a definite thing to do 
and he did it in record time. Forty of them imme- 
diately manned trucks and got them out of the 
hypothetical fire zone. Twenty others formed the 
crew of the motor fire engine and water tank which 
accompanied it. Here was a fire department and 
portable water mains — a unique combination. 

The moment a truck ,goes to a unit it is stamped 
with the device of the Army to which it is attached. 
Each large fighting unit has its own hall-mark. It 
may be a grenade, a shamrock, a star or a crown. 
All ammunition trucks are marked with a large 
white shell, which identifies them at once. The 
French markings are much more frivolous than the 
British. You can see their huge camions — the 
French word for trucks — ornamented with pictures 



THE MOTOR UNDER FIRE 159 

of barking dogs, crowing cocks or running hares. 

All vehicles that break down in the field are not 
sent to the Heavy Repair Shop, which is only used 
for real casualties. Scores of trucks are only slight- 
ly damaged every day. For these the shop reverses 
the usual procedure and literally goes to the relief 
of the disabled. This brings us to the whole system 
of Mobile Repair Shops, which contribute the most 
thrilling chapter in the whole story of Mechanical 
Transport reconstruction. 

You are now up in the zones of the armies where 
shells are flying, where the mechanics take their 
lives in their hands with the tools, and where trucks, 
cars and motorcycles limp in from the battle areas, 
have their wounds dressed and go back on the job. 
They correspond with the so-called walking cases 
with the wounded. 

Chief among these field patients are the gallant 
Divisional Supply Columns — the squadrons that get 
the food there no matter what lies in the path, and 
the no less gallant Ammunition Parks. These two 
units represent the Farthest North of the Army Me- 
chanical Transport. 

A Mobile Repair Shop is a miniature motor fac- 
tory on wheels. It is usually built on a five ton 
truck chassis, provides its own motor power and is 
thus enabled to go up and down the war area. 
Usually a Shop has a definite and fixed abode, but 
there is always an extra Shop that answers hurry- 
up calls. I mean by this that if a truck breaks down 



i6o THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

on the road or gets mired in a ditch the mountain 
comes to Mahomet. There are scores of minor de- 
fects and accidents, however, that do not require 
this procedure. The truck or car goes to the Re- 
pair Shop, which is often located in an open field. 
The conduct of these Shops demands courage and 
stamina. Like the Supply and Ammunition trains, 
they follow in the wake of the advancing armies. 
They are in truth First Aid to the Mechanically 
Injured. 

The Mobile Shops do a great deal more than 
minor repairs on the spot. They extricate trucks 
that slip into shell holes; they re-tire vehicles and 
they deliver the derelicts to the Heavy Repair 
Shops. The nearest parallel to this whole institu- 
tion that I can think of is the Flying Squadron of a 
Street Railway, which is a portable repair shop that 
goes racing up and down the tracks binding up the 
wounds of traffic. The difference between the Street 
Railway Emergency car and the Mobile Shop is 
that one is not under fire and the other is exposed 
to nearly all the dangers incurred by the fighting 
armies. 

You have now spanned the whole Mechanical 
Transport activity from factory to the front. You 
have seen how the motor vehicle brings up food, 
hauls ammunition, conveys soldiers, moves the 
wounded from field station to train or hospital, fills 
up Base and Advanced Supply Depots with stores 
and renews itself with clock-like and unfailing reg- 



THE MOTOR UNDER FIRE 161 

ularity. This machine must be maintained at all 
hazards because a breakdown between Rail Head 
and Refilling Point, for example, would work a 
very serious hardship with the men in the trenches 
while an interruption between Rail Head and Am- 
munition Dump might jeopardise the success of ad- 
vance. 

How then is the army vehicle kept fit so that, 
aside from the damage by enemy action and the nat- 
ural hazards of congested traffic, it remains out of 
the repair shop and does its job? England expects 
every motor truck to do its duty and, thanks to a 
remarkable system of inspection, it does. 

To see just how this system works you must re- 
trace your steps to General Headquarters and go 
with me into the office of General Boyce, who is the 
originator and head of the whole scheme. It is 
epitomised on a big chart covered with red, green, 
blue and black marks, that hangs on the wall oppo- 
site him. These marks indicate the exact physical 
condition of every transport unit in the field. Here 
is the way it works : 

The inspection of vehicles is by Divisions, each 
having its own Mechanical Transport organisation 
which bears the number of the Division to which it 
is attached. Just as soon as a Division Transport 
Unit is inspected the result is marked on the chart 
in colours. If it registers one hundred per cent in 
efficiency and upkeep it gets a green mark; if the 
rating is seventy-five per cent the record is blue; 



162 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

if fifty per cent it is red. Any rating below fifty 
per cent literally gets a black mark. The Director 
of Transport, therefore, can sit at his desk and 
know from the color scheme in front of him the 
physical state of the organisation he controls. 

So much for the results of inspection. Let us 
now watch the operation. Under General Boyce is 
a staff of thirty inspectors. Although they wear 
British uniforms and rank as lieutenants and cap- 
tains every one of them was an automobile expert 
before the war. Each inspector has a district. His 
job is to see that the Mechanical Transport in his 
bailiwick is thoroughly inspected every three 
months. This means that every car is overhauled 
four times a year. 

These inspectors do not go about their jobs with 
a brass band. They show up at Mechanical Trans- 
port Unit Headquarters at all hours of the day or 
night. I went with one of these inspectors once on 
a very characteristic trip. We were travelling down 
a well-beaten road in the zone of a certain army 
when an empty three ton truck came into view. My 
companion suddenly turned to me and said: 

"I have a hunch that there is something the mat- 
ter with that truck. " He had spent much time in 
America and had picked up some of our slang as 
you observe. 

When the truck came alongside he stopped it, told 
the chauffeur who he was and and immediately pro- 
ceeded to examine the vehicle. First of all he 



THE MOTOR UNDER FIRE 163 

glanced at the driver's Log. In five minutes he 
discovered that the lubrication pipe was on the verge 
of becoming choked. If this had not been located 
the car would have broken down before it had gone 
much further. 

These inspectors have the right to hold up cars 
anywhere and all military policemen and traffic offi- 
cers (the highways of war are as adequately policed 
as Broadway in New York or State Street in Chi- 
cago) have special instructions to back them up in 
every possible way. An inspector, however, would 
never hold up a loaded truck. If he sees that there 
is anything wrong with it he will order the driver 
to report to him after he delivers his load. 

Watch one of these inspectors in action and you 
soon understand why the British Mechanical Trans- 
port is so efficient. When an Army Inspector in- 
spects he inspects all over. He wears overalls and 
gets under the truck or car. From this point of 
first-hand observation he calls out his discoveries 
to a stenographer who accompanies him on all his 
expeditions. Thus he overlooks nothing and has 
a record of everything. A specific report is made 
on every car inspected. It covers engine, front and 
back axle, transmission, body and equipment and 
does not overlook the inevitable rope, chain and kit 
of digging tools that every army truck in the field 
is required to carry. Between snow and mud the 
truck chauffeur does almost as much digging as 
the soldiers in the trenches. 



164 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

When an inspector overhauls a vehicle he usually 
takes a work shop officer with him who* does the 
manual work. The Mechanical Transport inspec- 
tion also includes the scrutiny of all steam trans- 
port used in the field. A limited number of steam 
engines are employed to haul some of the heavy 
guns. With them boiler inspection is the most im- 
portant detail. 

One more significant feature of British Mechani- 
cal Transport remains to be explained. It answers 
the inevitable question which any survey of this 
tremendous and far-reaching technical activity 
would provoke. That question is : "How does the 
Army keep track of more than fifty thousand vehi- 
cles that are being constantly shifted from place to 
place?" 

The answer is to be found in a Registration Sys- 
tem which begins as soon as a vehicle enters the 
service and continues until it is wiped off the Trans- 
port Map. Just as soon as a truck, for instance, 
arrives from England at a Base Mechanical Trans- 
port Depot in France its complete physical record 
is written on what is called a Vehicle Registration 
Form. There is a separate sheet for each make of 
vehicle. It includes the War Department number, 
the chassis type and number, the engine type and 
number, the size of front and rear tires and the 
drive. 

When a truck is assigned to a unit the narrative 
of its travels begins and a careful check is kept on 



THE MOTOR UNDER FIRE 165 

its movements from that hour on. Every time it is 
transferred from one unit to another a report is 
sent to what is called the Census Branch, which is 
located in a little French town not many miles from 
General Headquarters, and which is the fountain 
head of all information about the great Mechanical 
Transport Fleet in France. You can go into its 
office any day, ask for the location of a truck or 
car and find out in less than five minutes. More 
than this you can get the complete biography of the 
vehicle from the time it entered the service. 

That history is first summarised on an ordinary 
form card which is kept in a Live Index. As I write 
I have before me a copy of a card on which is 
typed the Army Record of an American three ton 
truck. At the top is its War Department number, 
the make and the type and number of chassis and 
engine. Below is a complete itemised list of every 
unit to which this car has been attached and the 
date of its service with it. 

From this record you can see the different kind 
of work that an Army Truck is called upon to per- 
form. This car's experience was no different from 
that of thousands of others scattered throughout 
Northern France. 

The Card Index, however, only represents the 
first stage of Vehicle Intelligence. It is a sort of 
Information Outpost. All the data in it and much 
more is transferred to a large loose-leaf ledger, 
which constitutes the complete Motor Census of the 



166 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Army Mechanical Transport. This book, which is 
being constantly revised, is an astonishing efficiency 
exhibit, and would be worth its weight in gold to 
any motor manufacturer. It is indexed under 
makes, and these makes in turn are registered ac- 
cording to their consecutive chassis numbers. 

Examine a leaf taken at random from the Census 
Ledger and you can see exactly how it works. The 
one that I shall use for illustration happens to deal 
with one of the best known English makes. On it 
is printed (not typed mind you) the date that the 
cars or ambulances entered the service, the units 
to which they have been attached, the War De- 
partment and chassis numbers, engine types and 
numbers, the size of the tires and the original source 
of the car or truck. In the case of a purchased 
vehicle the factory name is given. Where the motor 
car is a gift from private individual or organisation 
the name of the donor is presented. It may be a 
duke or a private citizen. If a car or truck is re- 
turned to England or "scrapped" this information 
is set forth in a separate column. The Ledger is so 
devised as to leave plenty of blank space for com- 
ing events in the life of the vehicle. As these events 
happen they are printed on small slips of paper and 
pasted on the leaf. Thus the Census becomes a 
really notable industrial document. 

Its value is as varied as it is great. Aside from 
being an absolutely infallible and up-to-date reg- 
ister of all Mechanical Transport in the Army it 



THE MOTOR UNDER FIRE 167 

supplies the basis for the adequate provision of 
spare parts and accessories. It likewise enables the 
Financial Adviser to the War Office to accurately 
estimate Mechanical Transport expenditures and to 
write off all vehicles as soon as they are useless. 
Like the Vocabulary, it is a definite and permanent 
contribution to the uplift of the whole motor indus- 
try — one of the Compensations of War. 



VII— The Salvage of Battle 



WHATEVER designation the Great War 
may have in history no one will ever deny 
that, among other things, it is a War of 
Contrasts. It provides the amazing spectacle of 
German and Turk lying down together; of ancient 
foes like England and France lined up on a com- 
mon battle front of freedom; of American troops 
under arms marching through the streets of Lon- 
don; of Industry reborn and Society transformed. 
But no contrast — not even the flowering of thrift 
amid the ruins of colossal war expenditure — is so 
striking as the welding of Waste and Conservation. 
Of all the strange bed-fellows of war these are the 
strangest. 

From time immemorial War has spelled destruc- 
tion. Yet out of the vast vortex which to-day en- 
gulfs men, money and materials, is coming another 
tremendous lesson in economy that will make peace 
efficient and orderly. The Salvage of War has 
been reduced to a precise science and is a definite 
and inseparable part of army operations in the field. 
The hand that destroys is the first to renew. Here 
you touch the least known of the many activities 
that go to make up the stupendous Business of War. 

Again you get the example of a powerful War 
Machine that began with almost nothing. The first 

168 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 169 

salvage was casual and depended, in the main, upon 
the initiative or enterprise of individual officers. 
Now it is a full fledged War Office Department with 
a complete and far-reaching organisation all its 
own and dedicated solely to rehabilitation. It saves 
the British Government millions of dollars every 
year and points, at the same time, a moral that 
nothing else could so forcibly impress. It is another 
Cinderella of the Service — once rejected, even 
abused — that has developed into one of the per- 
manent benefits of the huge conflict. 

In former wars the human being was about the 
only thing regarded as redeemable. While there was 
life there was always the proverbial hope that the 
fighting man could be saved and possibly restored 
to some usefulness. As for arms, ammunition, 
equipment, food and stores of all kinds the attitude 
was different. Why waste time on supplies that 
could be renewed ? Everything spoiled or damaged 
went into the junk heap and was buried or burned. 
This is one reason why War became the real syno- 
nym for waste. To preach reclamation on any kind 
of scale was almost unsoldierly — it sank to the 
basely commercial although it invited the inevitable 
post-war inquiry scandal. 

But that state of mind existed when war, as 
compared with present day operations, was on a 
pigmy scale. With a host equal to half the entire 
population of the United States called to the colors 
in all the nations involved, and with an average 



170 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

daily outlay of $160,000,000, Governments are in- 
clined to try to snatch a few faggots from the 
Titanic Fires. The British efforts in this direction 
have created an Agency of Reconstruction that is 
a marvel of administration. The legend of the pig 
squeal, phonographed in Chicago's Packingtown, to 
prove that the Beef Barons waste nothing, has a 
real parallel in the economies now practised with 
army food alone. 

During the first six months of the war — or even 
longer — there was terrific waste. In the circum- 
stances this was a very natural procedure. With 
food and equipment the whole effort of the War 
Office was concentrated on one ambition — to fill 
stomachs, to clothe bodies and to arm hands. In 
the mad rush to stem the German advance there 
was no time to think of economy. 

You had only to go to any one of the Mobilisation 
depots in England when Kitchener's First Hundred 
Thousand was being raised to find out that the 
British Government was looked upon by both the 
civil and military population as the Lady Bountiful. 
When battalions moved away from Salisbury Plain 
or one of the other great training camps nearly 
every house within a radius of fifteen miles was 
not only equipped with one or more army blankets 
but army food and stores of all description. When 
scores of men went home on leave their rations 
were drawn by the Quartermaster Sergeants just 
the same. It went to the garbage heap or to the 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 171 

camp followers. When an economically disposed 
officer remonstrated with his men about the ungodly 
waste the invariable reply was : 

"The Government is rich and can afford it. Why 
worry ?" 

Curiously enough the first sense of saving mani- 
fested itself where there was the greatest destruc- 
tion. This means that it began in France. It is 
not surprising also that it started with the Scotch, 
whose heroism under fire is only equalled by their 
thrift behind the lines. Instinct made the High- 
lander shy at the immense waste. He was not so 
keen as his English mate to discard a slightly soiled 
kilt or a damaged coat. His example was contagi- 
ous because, when all is said and done, thrift is a 
habit easily acquired. 

Originally only guns and rifles were salvaged. 
The time-honoured method of disposing of the 
debris of battle was to assemble it in huge piles and 
set fire to them. They proved to be costly bonfires. 
Along in 191 5 began the practice of segregating the 
wreckage of the battlefields and hauling it back to 
so-called "Dumps." The uniforms were taken out 
and sold for rags at $250 a ton. Only the brass 
buttons were retained. Practically all the other 
refuse was destroyed. 

One day the Quartermaster General to all the 
Forces, Lieutenant General Sir John S. Cowans, 
had an inspiration. He said to himself: "If these 
uniforms are worth $250 a ton to the junk man 



172 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

they ought to be worth a good deal more to the 
army. Let us try to restore them." 

As a result only actual rags went to the rag man 
and the near-rags were sent to Paris to be restored. 
out of this grew the great Paris Ordnance Depot, 
which to-day employs nearly four thousand women 
on salvage and saves the British Government in ac- 
tual money more than $12,000,000 a year. 

Such was the beginning of British Army Salvage 
on any kind of organised scale. Long before 191 5 
had rounded out its twelve months of blood and 
disaster there was a Salvage Squad in every army 
unit. The work has grown steadily in scope and 
energy. To-day almost before the flame and fury 
of battle subside these squads are on the battle 
ground, gathering up abandoned steel helmets, rifles, 
belts, haversacks, bayonets, shell cases, unexploded 
bombs and grenades, clothes, leggins, shoes — in 
fact every scrap of stuff that can be transported. 

All this equipment is thrown into motor trucks 
or wagons and hauled behind the lines where it 
is sorted out by individual items, loaded into freight 
cars and sent off to the various bases to be re- 
claimed there or sent on to England to be salvaged. 
Everything must be redeemed or yield the British 
Government some return as junk or raw material. 
Only the dead remain where they fall. They alone 
are the unsalvaged. 

Formerly all the shoes to be salvaged were 
shipped to a certain port in the north of France; 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 173 

the uniforms, blankets, kilts, underwear and rubber 
boots were overhauled in Paris, while most of the 
Ordnance went to England. As the litter of battle 
grew in volume it became necessary to increase the 
Salvage Depots until there were three shoe saving 
stations and half a dozen Ordnance Reclamation 
Establishments in France and in England. A small 
army had to be recruited for this work. 

With the development of the salvage idea nat- 
urally came a definite organisation for its conduct. 
The physical end is under the immediate direction 
of Army Service Corps Officers who in civil life 
were engaged in some kind of business. The rank 
and file are enlisted men invalided out of active 
service or unfit for fighting by reason of physical 
disability or over-age. For two years each army 
in the field had a Salvage Head while the entire 
work was supervised by the Quartermaster General 
to all the Forces, who had a ranking representative 
at General Headquarters in France. 

The scope of salvage reached such a point (its 
financial turnover represented many millions of dol- 
lars while the number of articles retrieved grew 
to an almost incredible total) that it has developed 
into what the British Officer would call a separate 
"show"; that is, a complete and self-sustaining 
Branch of the Army. 

You can see the whole Scheme of Salvage set 
forth on one of the huge charts similar to those 
that outline the strategy of Supply and Transport 



174 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

and their allied activities. Once more you have the 
helpful pyramid indicating every step of a vast 
business system. 

The apex of the pyramid is the Salvage Board, 
composed of the Quartermaster General to all the 
Forces, the Master General of Ordnance, the 
Director General of Military Aeronautics, the 
Director of Supply and Transport, the Director 
of Ordnance and Equipment Stores, the Surveyor 
General of Supply, the Director of Military Move- 
ments, a representative of the Ministry of Muni- 
tions and two commercial members. The Voice and 
Interpreter of the Board is the Director of Sal- 
vage, Brigadier General L. W. Atcherley. In the 
nature of his executive duties he corresponds to the 
Director of Supply and Transport, who is housed 
under the same roof. Under him are five Deputy 
Directors of Salvage in England, each one in charge 
of a separate Department. Their opposite numbers 
in the field are called Controllers of Salvage. There 
is one with every army unit overseas whether it be 
France, Salonika, Egypt, Africa or Mesopotamia. 
In other words, the sun never sets on the British 
Reclamation program. 

The first and most spectacular Department in the 
General Organisation deals with Collection and 
Field Sorting. This is the unit that hovers on the 
fringe of battle and gets on the job before the 
smoke lifts from the hard- fought fields. Its func- 
tion, therefore, is Battle Salvage. In order to un- 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 175 

derstand the whole Reclamation process it might 
be well to explain here that there are two separate 
and distinct kinds of salvage. One is Battle Sal- 
vage, which deals with the debris of actual fighting 
and includes all trench materials such as wood and 
iron, shell-cases, guns, rifles, equipment, clothing, 
tools and other stores that have been damaged in 
actual fighting. The other is the so-called Normal 
Salvage, which is material such as empty packing 
cases, gasolene cans and other articles which never 
reach the battlefield. 

As you examine this Salvage System you find it 
reverses the procedure of Supply and Transport. 
With Food and Motor Trucks, for example, you 
begin at the Point of Production and follow the 
commodity straight to the front, where it is de- 
stroyed or consumed. With Salvage, on the other 
hand, you begin with destruction or damage and 
retrace your steps to restoration. 

All Advanced Salvage Depots (here again you 
find the parallel with the Supply and Transport Or- 
ganisation) have a double function. The undam- 
aged equipment is cleaned on the spot and returned 
immediately to the Issue Stores. The damaged 
goods is sent back to the Base Depots for renewal. 
This comprises what might be called the Field Sal- 
vage Organisation. 

The next Department deals with Second Sorting. 
A damaged belt or haversack easily repairable might 
be discarded as useless in the routine at the Ad- 



176 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

vanced Base and thrown into the junk heap. In 
order to put a check on carelessness the stuff is sub- 
mitted to a second inspection. If there is the 
slightest chance to save it it goes to a Home Repair 
Shop located in England, where if classed as abso- 
lutely hopeless it lands among the "scrap" and is 
distributed by the Controller who deals with raw 
materials. You can see from the work of this De- 
partment that the Salvage Organisation lets no pos- 
sible piece of salvagable material escape. 

The work of the Third Section is concerned with 
Transport, Classification and Distribution of arti- 
cles to be repaired and of the "scrap," metal and 
materials. It sees that all the goods to be salvaged 
lands in England and is distributed to the proper 
factories and Depots. It is in constant communica- 
tion with the War Office as to its needs and as to 
available ports because all army shipping is con- 
stantly up against the eternal problem of tonnage. 

Here, however, there is not the usual hectic scram- 
ble for cargo space because the Quartermaster Gen- 
eral's ships which go over laden with food and ord- 
nance stores are employed to bring the salvage ma- 
terial back to England. There are no empty hauls. 
The task, therefore, is to fit the returning ship to 
the port nearest the reclamation depot to be used. 
Here is the way it works: 

The Deputy Director of Salvage in charge of the 
Third Section is informed by wire from France, 
for example, that fifty eighteen-pounders are to be 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 177 

salvaged and await shipment. He immediately gets 
in touch with the Master General of Ordnance, who 
naturally asks if they are worth repairing. If he is 
told that they are he then consults the State of 
Work at Ordnance Depots. He may find that he 
can squeeze the guns into Woolwich Arsenal and 
therefore instructs the Deputy Director of Salvage 
to have them shipped there. 

The next phase in the organisation is the all- 
important wing which deals with Statistics, Over- 
head Cost and Accounting. A complete set of 
books is kept on every group of items salvaged. It 
must yield a profit in renewal or it is sold as junk 
or employed as raw material. The word profit in 
connection with salvage has a more or less elastic 
definition. It may mean an actual money margin 
or its equivalent in time or labour saved in getting 
the article fresh from a factory. 

When you reach the Fifth and final sub-pyramid 
in the Salvage Organisation you are in contact with 
one of the most significant of all its ramified activi- 
ties for here you reach the Plans for Demobilisa- 
tion. You find outlined on paper the stages by 
which the enormous armament of war will be trans- 
ferred to the uses of peace in the shortest and most 
efficient fashion. To look at only one angle, when 
the war ends England will find herself owning hun- 
dreds of thousands of cannon, large and small, and 
many millions of rifles. How to convert all this 
metal into plough shares will be the great problem. 



178 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Much of this procedure is secret, of course. For 
one thing, however, it is planned to utilise the re- 
turning armies to bring this immense mass of ma- 
terial home with them. 

The reason is obvious. Just as soon as peace 
comes the average British Tommy is likely to throw 
away his gun and say to himself : "This war is over. 
The devil take the equipment. I am going to beat 
it back to 'Blighty.' " Blighty, as most people know, 
is the soldier's slang phrase for England. 

The big meaning of this Demobilisation Salvage 
plan is that salvage will not end with war. As a 
matter of fact it will just begin. It is a hint of that 
mighty conservation of all resources which will 
make Great Britain a new world Industrial Power. 

Having seen the outline of the Salvage System 
you can now go into the field and watch it at work. 
No branch of it is more imposing than the Paris 
Ordnance Depot. Here you get a very striking illus- 
tration of the growth of Salvage as well as some 
idea of the immense financial profit that accrues 
to the British Government. 

This Depot began as a "Dump" for mud and 
blood-spattered overcoats, riding breeches, blankets 
and kilts. To-day it reclaims millions of articles of 
wearing apparel and equipment every year, is or- 
ganised like a huge business and saves John Bull 
a sum greater than the net profits of a full-fledged 
American Trust. 

I went to this Depot one day last autumn. Be- 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 179 

fore I passed through its carefully guarded gates 
the whirr of hundreds of sewing machines smote 
my ear. The place literally hummed with industry. 
Freight cars were being shunted back and forth in 
the yards. Army trucks loaded with clothing rattled 
in and out. When the luncheon whistle blew thou- 
sands of women streamed forth to get their de- 
jeuner. I could not help realising that this com- 
pletely equipped establishment, vibrating with ener- 
gy grew out of a pile of battle salvage and dealt 
with the by-products of war. 

The Paris Depot — and it is typical in organisation 
of all the other large salvage stations — is in charge 
of a once retired colonel, a "dugout" as they are 
called, who has come back into the service like 
thousands of his comrades. Too old to fight, he 
is doing his bit amid the din and dust of the Waste 
of War. Having encountered the stench of more 
than one Reclamation Depot I can truthfully attest 
to the fact that it requires more courage, certainly a 
stronger staying power, to work there than to go 
"over the top." 

All the articles to be salvaged are sent in special 
trains straight from the Base Depots behind the 
lines to the Paris Depot. There are two stages of 
sorting. The stuff* is first dumped into huge open 
sheds, where a motley assortment of French women 
do the overhauling. Practically all the labour is 
recruited from the immediate neighborhood of the 
Depot. It includes the wives, sisters, mothers, 



180 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

grandmothers and sometimes great-grandmothers 
( for the French woman's labours only end with the 
grave) of soldiers. The scene in one of these great 
sorting houses is as amusing as it is stuffy. You 
can see a wrinkled French woman with her head 
done up in a shawl and wearing the tunic of a ser- 
geant in the Royal Medical Corps. The old lady 
is usually very proud of the Red Cross on her sleeve. 
Another ancient dame is swathed in the folds of an 
army overcoat, still spattered with the mud of Flan- 
ders, while the third may be seen attired in the 
closely buttoned-up coat of a member of the Royal 
Flying Corps, which she has exhumed from some 
foul-smelling heap of soiled uniforms. 

These women throw the repairable articles into 
portable bins, which are trundled off to the clean- 
ing rooms whence they go to the various Reclama- 
tion Divisions. As I have already intimated, the 
articles come straight from the battlefields and like 
the wreckage in a Mechanical Transport Casualty 
Park, are eloquent, if odorous evidence of the life 
and death struggle in which they have figured. Most 
tragic of all the exhibits are the tunics with the 
tell-tale and scorched bullet holes through which 
the messengers of death have sped so unerringly. 

Every article has a separate department in charge 
of a subordinate officer who has an adequate staff. 
The Paris Depot is unique in the fact that it is the 
one salvage place where every square inch of ma- 
terial that comes in is reclaimed or used in some 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 181 

way. The only thing not salvaged are the body 
vermin, which are slaughtered. I speak of vermin 
(no well-regulated Salvage Station is complete 
without them) because the Paris Depot specialises 
in kilts which are the favorite stamping ground for 
the little travellers. This is in no sense a commen- 
tary on the Scotch, who regard cleanliness as the 
next best thing to their proverbial godliness, but 
because the many folds in a kilt provide a safe and 
snug retreat for the pests. 

Aside from the war on vermin — they are steamed 
out — the whole kilt renovation is a picturesque per- 
formance. Every Scotch regiment has its own par- 
ticular tartan, which has some distinguishing stripe, 
check or color arrangement. After the skirt is over- 
hauled it is sorted out by plaids. The sergeant in 
charge — a battle-scarred veteran of the Argyll and 
Sutherland Highlanders — knows every one of the 
many Scotch tartans and piles them up by regiment 
as they come in. 

To get down to practical facts, a new kilt costs 
on an average of $5.50. It is repaired, renewed 
and sent back as good as new for exactly fifty cents. 
When a kilt is not redeemable it is cut up in pieces 
and used to line overcoats. 

No feature of work at the Paris Depot is more 
animated than the reclamation of fur and sheep- 
skin coats and leather jerkins worn by the motor 
transport chauffeurs. During the first winter of 
the war thousands of these sheep-skin coats were 



182 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

used. They soiled so easily and became infected 
with so much vermin that the leather jerkin was 
substituted and has been found to be much more 
practical and sanitary. These coats and jerkins 
are placed in huge wooden drums, in which sawdust 
is thrown generously. The drums are rolled by 
machinery and the dirt and other impurities liter- 
ally dashed out of the garments. It mixes with 
the sawdust and is removed with it. The sawdust is 
then used for fuel. Five thousand of these garments 
can be cleaned every day. The number of leather 
jerkins cleaned during six months last year was 
exactly 298,612, which represented a saving in 
money to the British Government of over $500,000. 
Since the depot was established 700,000 jerkins and 
300,000 sheep-skin coats have been cleaned and re- 
stored. I might add that the renovated jerkin and 
fur coat is much sought after by the British Tommy 
because it is softer and more wearable than a new 
garment. 

Overcoats, or great coats as the British call them, 
are a big item at the Paris Depot. During the six 
months preceding my visit exactly 304,193 had 
been redeemed. If the government had been com- 
pelled to buy these at first hand and at the Army 
Vocabulary or Catalogue price they would have 
cost $2,375,000. These coats, turned back to the 
army at one-half this price, represented a net money 
saving therefore of over $1,000,000, with all over- 
head cost deducted. 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 183 

When an overcoat is beyond repair for a soldier 
it is stained grey or black and served out to the 
Chinese, East Indian or Egyptian Labour Battal- 
ions, or to the Prisoners of War. 

At this Depot I saw a pile of German top coats 
captured during a big advance and which were be- 
ing salvaged. Eventually they will cover the backs 
of Hun prisoners, who will get the surprise of their 
lives when perhaps their own garments will be issued 
\o them by their foes. Such is the irony of war ! 

The retrieving of clothes (the so-called service 
dress which includes jackets, trousers and riding 
breeches) opens up a fresh vista of well organised 
salvage. All garments are divided into three classes. 
The first, which is designated A, is for garments 
of the first class; that is, uniforms that can be worn 
by soldiers in training or behind the lines. The 
second class, catalogued as B, includes garments 
not so desirable, which are to be used by men in the 
trenches, while the third class, C, comprises the 
work clothes for men engaged in building roads or 
in any one of the numerous manual labour jobs 
in field or camp. 

The supervision of this work requires skill of a 
very high order. In charge of the whole job is a 
Scotch civilian who in civil life was head of a huge 
clothing establishment in London. Under him is a 
corps of trained French forewomen who classify the 
garments. With very deft fingers they stitch the 



184 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

class labels on the garments as they come by for 
inspection. 

In this clothing department literally thousands of 
needles fly every day. The women are paid by 
piece work and, being French and therefore thrifty, 
they are in a constant contest with time. In order 
to speed each other up these models of industry 
work in friendly but highly profitable rivalry. The 
woman with the fattest time-check for the week 
is indeed the envy of all her co-workers. 

The clothing output is in keeping with the pro- 
duction of the other departments. The average 
number of tunics or jackets overhauled during a 
six months' period has been approximately 202,000. 
If John Bull had bought these in the open market 
at the regulation Vocabulary price they would have 
cost him exactly $729,000. By turning them over 
to the Government on a basis of half this price the 
saving is therefore $364,500. With riding breeches 
and trousers the saving is correspondingly large. 

Another huge item of salvage relates to blankets 
of all kinds. During the six months ending last 
December 1,555,803 blankets of all kinds were sal- 
vaged. Originally they represented a cost to the 
army of $3,889,505. Turned in to the Government 
on usual half price schedule they showed a saving 
of $1,944,252. Horse blankets at the rate of 160,- 
000 every six months and representing a saving of 
over $300,000 during that period alone are merely 
an incidental in the Blanket Department. Every 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 185 

year for the past two years the Paris Depot has sal- 
vaged an average of 20,000 pairs of gloves, 60,000 
cardigans, 130,000 pairs of woollen drawers, 120,- 
000 skirts, 41,000 towels and 200,000 woollen un- 
dervests. 

A complete "follow-up" system is in operation 
in every department. What is called a "Work-room 
Progress Return for the Week" is issued every 
Thursday morning. On this sheet you can see the 
number of garments despatched, the wages paid and 
the exact cost per garment of every item salvaged. 
You find out, for instance, that the exact cost per 
garment of salvaging 140,000 pairs of pantaloons 
was ninety-seven centimes, or about twenty cents. 
On the same sheet I observed that the cost per 
garment in wages of salvaging 8,629 kilts was 297 
centimes, or about sixty cents. So it went. The 
total of garments of all kinds handled was 805,312, 
while the average wages bill for each article was 
about 75 centimes, or only fifteen cents. 

Now take a final look at the books of the Paris 
Depot and you discover that after deducting all ex- 
penses, including civilian labour, cost of material, 
coal transport, rent, machinery, and wear and tear 
the profits for six months ending December 31, 
1916, were $5,232,540. This average was more 
than sustained during 19 17, when the total esti- 
mated saving for the year was about $12,000,000. 
One unromantic but useful item on the income side 
of this Salvage Ledger is rags. Every six months 



186 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

this Depot sells not less than 500 tons at $250 a ton. 

Aside from this huge saving in actual money the 
reclamation at the Paris Ordnance Depot — before 
the Government established its Wool Control — had 
a very decided effect on keeping down the price of 
wool. If the British Government had been required 
to go into the open market and buy the millions 
of woollen garments represented by the number sal- 
vaged there would have been a very appreciable in- 
crease in the price of the raw material. 

In Paris you can also see the Rubber Salvage 
Factory. This is run entirely on its own, that is, 
separate and distinct from the Ordnance Depot that 
I have just described. This plant has a peculiar 
significance because rubber these days is almost as 
valuable as gold and every ounce of it is carefully 
conserved. The chief items salvaged are thigh boots 
used in the trenches, capes, coats and ground sheets 
upon which the soldiers sleep. 

The usual story of economy is repeated here. A 
pair of rubber boots that at wholesale cost $10 in 
London is redeemed here for sixty cents; a sal- 
vaged cape that cost $5.00 is turned out as good as 
new for fourteen cents. You get a hint of the real 
saving effected in rubber when I tell you that be- 
fore the Paris Rubber Factory was started the 
British Government got a bid from French Con- 
tractors to restore thigh boots at $8.00 a pair ! This 
was the lowest bid sent in. 

Last year this Depot salvaged 450,000 rubber 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 187 

boots alone. It is in charge of a temporary officer 
who took a three months' course of instruction in 
one of the largest rubber factories in England and 
who later established a school of instruction for 
the hundreds of women employed. 

After clothing the item of personal wear that 
represents the largest amount of salvage is shoes. 
The British Government not only makes it shoes — 
since the outbreak of the war 24,500,000 pairs have 
been issued — but it has gone into sole-saving on a 
tremendous scale. The shoe salvage which began 
very modestly at a northern French port has grown 
to such an extent that the original plant now has a 
huge branch in the east of London. 

Both of these plants have the same system of 
operation. The French establishment, however, has 
elements of distinct human interest. It employs 
more than a thousand French and Belgian girls who 
sing as they work despite the ungodly smell that 
comes from the battered footgear, plastered as it is 
with the mud of road and trench and sometimes 
filled with rotten straw or the old socks which the 
weary marcher has stuffed in to ease his aching 
feet. 

All shoes in the army arrive at the Salvage 
Depots in sacks. When you see the contents dumped 
out you ask : "Is it humanly possible to repair this 
foul mass of tattered leather ? But it is — and in 
amazing fashion. 

To begin with, the susceptibilities of the average 



188 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

French woman who works with her hands are not 
quite so sensitive as yours. She not only sees sal- 
vation for a great many of the soiled shoes but a 
highly satisfactory rate of compensation for her- 
self in the salvaging. These sorters have nimble 
fingers and keen eyes. In a second they decide what 
shoes are fit for service again and which ones — 
usually those with bad uppers — must be "scrapped." 
If one shoe of a pair is unfit for further use the 
other is salvaged and, since the sizes are standard- 
ised, it is linked up with another odd one and the 
two go on their way of service. 

Shoe reclamation, as you may well imagine, is 
not fragrant. But the French women and their 
sisters in the London factory, buck up to the job 
with great fortitude. It is all part of the day's 
work. 

The shoes go through a systematic process of 
overhauling. One group of women clean the rough 
mud from the outside, clear out all the foreign mat- 
ter inside and plunge them into great tanks of hot 
water mixed with carbolic acid. Following this 
bath they are scrubbed thoroughly, after which they 
are dried out on racks and coated with warm castor 
oil. They then pass to a group of amazons chosen 
for their physical strength, who put the boots on 
iron lasts and tear off the old soles and heels. The 
shoes are now sorted out into sizes by pairs, enter 
the domain of another group who tack on tempo- 
rarily the correct sized sole before it is permanently 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 189 

nailed on by machine. The heel-tipping, toe-plating 
and hob-nailing — these army shoes must be like iron 
— are done by hand. 

Every shoe salvaged is blocked for several hours 
so as to guarantee the exact size. After these blocks 
or lasts are removed the heels are inked, the size is 
stamped on the sole, the boot is again oiled and 
goes into the Store ready to be requisitioned. Like 
the leather jerkins salvaged in Paris, these repaired 
shoes are more popular with the soldiers than new 
ones for the simple reason that they are broken in 
for wear and never pinch the feet. 

So much for the uppers that can stand new soles 
and heels. What becomes of the uppers that are" 
frayed and torn? Once more Scotch thrift has 
come to the fore and saved the day. When the 
French shoe salvage shop was first inaugurated all 
the damaged uppers were "scrapped." One day a 
young Aberdeen sergeant, wounded at Mons, and 
who was still standing by the colors by acting as 
foreman in the shoe shop, decided that these uppers 
should be saved. Almost on the spot he invented 
a machine which converts the unrepairable uppers 
into shoe strings. It is a circular knife operated at 
high speed. With great dexterity the French girls 
hold the upper in front of the knife and pull out 
the lace by the rear. 

All told more than a million pairs of shoes were 
salvaged in 19 16, while the record for last year 
was considerably over this number. At the pres- 



igo THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

ent high price of leather the saving runs into mil- 
lions of dollars. 

No detail of British Army Salvage is quite so 
striking in its human aspect as the retrieving of 
automobile spare parts. To observe this we will 
go back to the Empire of Mechanical Transport 
and establish ourselves at one of its largest Base 
Depots. Here, in an immense new concrete fac- 
tory, which represents the last word in time and 
labour saving construction, you will see one of the 
strangest sights of the war. It is nothing more or 
less than twelve hundred German prisoners, still 
clad in their fatigue uniforms, working at tool, 
lathe and bench and under the foremanship of Brit- 
ish sergeant majors who were skilled mechanics 
before the war. 

The German prisoners represent the combing out 
of the many thousands of Huns now in British 
hands. When it was decided to salvage damaged 
automobile parts there arose at once that most per- 
sistent of all war questions — where is the skilled 
labour to come from? Back in England every 
available and able bodied mechanic was geared up 
to munition making or some other essential war 
industry. A long-headed subordinate under the 
Director of Transport solved the problem by sug- 
gesting that artisan German prisoners be used. 
Every batch contained at least a few competent 
workers. He argued that they could earn their 
board and lodging at a lathe much better and ren- 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 191 

der a larger service to their keepers than by build- 
ing roads or carrying sacks of oats at the Supply 
Depots. 

The net result was that every Prisoner of War 
Company underwent a strict investigation. It was 
an easy task. These Companies are all in charge 
of their own non-commissioned officers, who, with 
characteristic German efficiency, keep complete 
records of their men and their pre-war occupa- 
tions. These N. C. O/s were asked to choose the 
most skilled of their colleagues. 

When the factory was completed twelve hundred 
operatives were ready and more than willing to go 
to work. The big, warm, well-lighted and perfect- 
ly ventilated plant was like heaven after the cold 
roads, dirty ships and draughty warehouses in 
which many of them had toiled since their capture. 
These prisoners proved to be so capable and so in- 
dustrious that the British Government now gives 
them a money allowance of three francs a day. 
This wage is paid in a special money printed for 
this purpose. It is legal tender at the Army Can- 
teens, where the Boche prisoners can buy ciga- 
rettes, jam, beer and their dearly beloved sausage. 
Whether it is due to the extra money or the com- 
fort in which they work, one thing is certain — the 
German prisoners on the salvage task have made 
good. Most of them are wise enough to realise 
that, following this unique experience, they will not 



192 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

only be alive but much more efficient when the war 
ends. 

At this German-run Shop $25,000 worth of spare 
parts are salvaged every week. When you con- 
sider the immense need of automobile and truck 
spares, the great difficulty in securing them and the 
scarcity of steel you can understand how essential 
this branch of reclamation becomes. 

There are three alternatives in Mechanical Trans- 
port retrieving. The first is to repair the article 
as, for example, a magneto, and restore it to its 
original form. The second is to melt down the 
metal and use it for raw material. The third is to 
"scrap" it. All "scrap" from the Mechanical Trans- 
port goes to the Ministry of Munitions. These 
same rules apply to the salvaging of aeroplane en- 
gine parts. 

More than 3,000 separate motor vehicle parts are 
repaired and issued for immediate use each week. 
They include complete engines, radiators, ball bear- 
ings, axles and wheels, accessories and fittings like 
lamps, batteries, wind screens, magnetos, inner 
tubes, spark plugs and speedometers. Altogether 
50,000 spark plugs and 2,000 magnetos have been 
reclaimed since the work began. The total value 
of all the salvaged parts is more than $2,500,000. 

When a part is beyond repair the material of 
which it is composed is frequently used for the 
reproduction of that "spare" or for the repair of 
some other. Destroyed radiators are melted down 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 193 

to make new ones; burnt-out truck valves are ma- 
chined into car valves ; worn brass bushes are recast 
and made into new ones. About fifteen hundred 
such parts are made and remade every week. Abso- 
lutely nothing is permitted to go to waste. Even 
the solder baths used in the repair work come from 
the scrap heap. 

Like nearly every other important war activity 
the Reclamation of Automobile spare parts is doing 
its bit in the permanent uplift of Industry. Its 
prize contribution is a new system of renewing iron 
or steel parts. For the want of something better 
this process is called Electric Steel Deposition. Any 
metal part that needs building up can be restored 
to its original form by this ingenious device, which 
applies the new skin electrically. It is really a bath, 
resembles electro-plating in operation and was in- 
vented by one of the temporary officers stationed at 
the factory. 

The next chapter in the story of War Salvage 
takes us across the Channel to an ancient Citadel 
of British Ordnance, long the centre of treasured 
military traditions. Here you see an entirely differ- 
ent class of work. 

It deals, for one thing, with web and canvas 
equipment. This includes packs, haversacks and 
cartridge belts. Originally all these articles were 
made of leather, but as the demands of war grew 
at such tremendous pace the web stuff was substi- 



194 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

tuted for the hide and is proving to be just as 
efficient and much more easily salvaged. 

At this arsenal John Bull's War Laundry goes 
at full swing. All the web and canvas equipment 
is washed in huge tubs and darned with machinery. 
It is restored to the men as good as new. 

But it is with leather equipment that the real 
miracle is wrought. Hundreds of saddles come in 
from the front every week. Many of them are shot 
full of holes and nearly all have the mud of the 
French roads still clinging to them. A new officer's 
saddle represents an outlay of from $50 to $100. In 
this process of salvage it can be remade for several 
dollars. 

So, too, with the leather trench tool carriers, 
which represent a very considerable item of ex- 
pense. This procedure discloses one of the many 
illustrations of war utility. In the old days before 
this war when no one thought of husbanding raw 
material the British troops that went to India and 
Egypt used huge leather bags to contain the spare 
bedding. They represented acres of hides. All 
these now unnecessary bags have been called in 
and converted into containers for trench tools. 

One significant adjunct of the leather restoration 
is a School for Saddlers, which is operated in con- 
nection with the salvage work. Here the men are 
trained to do repair work in the field. They get a 
complete course of instruction under experienced 
saddlers. In the work shop you see dummy horses 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 195 

equipped with every kind of leather kit used in the 
army. Every man must serve his time in the 
leather salvage department, which gives him prac- 
tical experience. When he goes to France or one 
of the other theatres of war he can tackle any sort 
of leather repair job. 

No evidence of the completness of the army 
thrift crusade is more striking than the treatment 
of carcass cloths. It deals with the large pieces of 
white linen used to cover the carcasses of beef that 
come from South America, the United States and 
Australia. In ordinary times and in ordinary wars 
these blood-stained sheets would have been thrown 
away as worthless. To-day you see them literally 
cooked down in large vats. Their long contact with 
the beef on the voyage has impregnated them with 
considerable fat. In the boiling process this grease 
comes to the surface, is skimmed off and used for 
what is called "dubbing," an excellent leather soft- 
ener. The rags themselves are cut into small pieces 
and employed for general cleaning purposes. This 
operation represents salvage raised to the nth de- 
gree. It is like splitting hairs. 

No less drastic is the treatment to which the 
empty flour sacks at Army Bakeries are subjected. 
Flour always clings to its cloth receptacle and it 
is worth reclaiming. The bags, therefore, are 
dropped into a hopper, which revolves at great 
speed and extracts every particle of flour from the 
goods. The sacks are used for various purposes 



196 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

and the flour goes into army bread. At one bak- 
ery in France the saving in flour which would other- 
wise have been lost in the sack is not less than $250 
a week. 

While we are on the subject of flour I am re- 
minded of still another unusual piece of salvage. 
Nearly all the ovens at one of the largest Base 
Bakeries in France, in which hundreds of thousands 
of loaves of bread are baked every day, are merely 
reclaimed Travelling Ovens which were originally 
part of the commissary equipment of troops in the 
field. On account of the rough usage they usually 
show signs of deterioration in the outer casing after 
six months of hard service. W 7 ith this decay comes 
a decrease in bread output because less heat is re- 
tained. This proved to be a serious handicap in 
the feeding of troops. It was almost impossible 
to make adequate repairs and scores of the ovens 
had to be "scrapped." Since each one cost from 
$950 to $1,000 the loss to the Public Purse was 
very great. 

A bright young man in the Army Service Corps 
— once more the ever-ready and useful temporary 
officer — suggested that these travelling ovens could 
be bricked in and made into ground ovens. Two 
ovens were accordingly installed in this way and 
they proved to be so successful that within six 
months practically every oven at the Depot I am 
describing was built out of abandoned field prop- 
erty. 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 197 

■Ml— — — — ■ ■■-■ ■ '■ ' ' II ■■!■■■■■■ — — L I. -,..,. ■ ■ — ,., — ■— — 

In the field the travelling oven burns wood. This 
proved to be a very expensive item for the bakeries. 
Coke was substituted, with the result that a great 
saving in fuel cost was effected. As a matter of 
exact fact the saving at this one bakery amounts 
to $12,000 every month and this includes the cost 
of transporting the fuel. More than this not a 
single travelling oven has been "scrapped" since 
the scheme was inaugurated. To cap the climax 
of conservation at this bakery I have only to add 
that it is built on reclaimed ground. 

The system of salvage extends everywhere. Noth- 
ing is immune. Every gasolene can is used and 
reused until it is dilapidated and then the tin is 
sold. The wooden packing cases are employed 
until they fall to pieces and the scraps become 
kindling; hospital dressings are sterilised and sold 
as cotton waste; small motor parts are sent up to 
the front in empty cigarette and tobacco tins set 
aside for the purpose; damaged gas helmets are 
washed in warm water so that the chemicals used 
in them may be retrieved. The British soldier is 
taught that true economy, like the wealth that ac- 
cumulates from pennies, is merely the sum of small 
things. 

The same minute conservation applies to battle 
salvage. Wherever you go in the zones of the 
armies you are likely to see unexploded shells, or 
"duds" as the army calls them. Before economy 
got its grip on the fighting hosts very little atten- 



198 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

tion was paid to them. They were allowed to re- 
main in the fields where they dropped. Up near a 
battered village that had recently been captured I 
saw this sign in the midst of the ruins : 

"Save Shells. They are for Fritz — not for 
Waste." 

In a French town taken by the British Forces 
last summer and which had been under severe bom- 
bardment for a long time these signs are posted 
everywhere : 



PICK UP A NAIL 
AND SAVE A HORSE 



Under these signs are empty biscuit boxes into 
which the men throw the nails that litter the streets. 
One reason for this injunction, aside from the fact 
that it saves actual nails, is that it prevents many 
an army horse from getting them in his hoofs and 
going lame. 

The salvage of wood — and more especially the 
timber taken out of captured or abandoned German 
trenches — is carried on on a very large scale. Each 
army has a miniature saw mill as part of its equip- 
ment. One British Army supplied all its wood needs 
for six months out of the supports and walls ob- 
tained from German positions. This did not in- 



THE SALVAGE OF BATTLE 199 



elude the thousands of poplar trees which had 
once lined the roadsides and which had been 
slaughtered by the retreating Huns with character- 
istic wantonness. 



VIII — The Army Food Drive 

THIS panorama of reconstruction, ranging 
from redeemed biscuit cans to restored 
nine-inch howitzers, is merely the approach 
to the most significant of British salvage processes. 
For now we come to Food Economy, to the con- 
servation of the one commodity which more than 
any other, and not even excepting guns and am- 
munition, will help to turn the tide of conflict. At 
a time when the food question is looming large as 
a crucial war factor this work is of supreme in- 
terest to the whole American people. 

The greatest army waste was with food and, by 
the same token, food is now the basis of the most 
remarkable of all salvage activities. It furnishes 
the lesson in thrift that reaches from the domain 
of battling armies straight into every man's home. 
It is the Universal Theme. 

When John Jones, the average citizen anywhere, 
growls about the high cost of living and contem- 
plates the hole that kitchen extravagance makes in 
his income he thinks that he is a much-abused per- 
son. He is struggling with a problem that only 
affects his own household — at most a comparatively 
few people. Consider then the proposition that con- 
fronted the British Government with thousands of 
kitchens and millions of men to feed and you real- 

200 



THE ARMY FOOD DRIVE 201 

ise the enormous dent that waste in cooking and 
eating made in the national pocketbook. 

Its job was to keep the new and growing armies 
fed regardless of consumption. But when the great 
machine of Supply struck its stride and the armies 
were shaken down, one of the first things that 
bobbed up for investigation and possible super- 
vision was the question of food outlay. Already 
the menace of famine brooded over the horizon. 
The submarine danger was growing each day; food 
ships were going down every week; England was 
in the grip of a Food Controller. The conserva- 
tion of what men and women ate became a matter 
of vital necessity. 

Of course, food restriction had to begin with the 
civilian. The last person where it could possibly 
be enforced was with the fighting man. Yet no 
one realised more than the Army Chiefs themselves 
that the wastage among the troops was little less 
than criminal. Something had to be done. 

It followed, therefore, that along in the summer 
of 1 91 6 a definite movement was inaugurated to 
conserve and control army food consumption but 
most of all to put a check on the hideous waste that 
was sacrificing untold tons of supplies every year. 
A new wing of the Quartermaster General's De- 
partment was set up and dedicated to the super- 
vision, maintenance and auditing of all Mess Ser- 
vices at home and abroad. It was technically called 
The Quartermaster General's Inspection Service, 



202 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Before this new department had been in opera- 
tion twelve months it had not only brought about 
drastic reforms that saved millions of dollars, but 
had stimulated industry, stiffened British independ- 
ence in one very essential branch of munitions mak- 
ing and established a full-fledged and highly profit- 
able business. 

Since the kitchen was the root of the food wast-, 
age evil it became the goal of a great offensive. 
First of all the army cooks were put under the 
microscope and carefully analysed. Up to this time 
most of them had been drafted from civil life. The 
majority were incompetent. They looked upon 
government food as something devised for waste. 
In this idea they were aided and abetted by the 
soldiers themselves, who frequently threw away 
more of their rations than they ate. This grand 
carnival of extravagance at government expense 
was doomed to a speedy finish. 

"If we are going to censor the kitchen we must 
begin with the cook/' said the new Watch Dogs 
of the Messes. 

The only way to get efficient cooks was to train 
them so Schools of Cookery were started in Eng- 
land and Scotland. They are in charge of tempo- 
rary officers, all experienced caterers in civil life, 
who are called Instructors in Catering. These 
schools proved to be so successful in the United 
Kingdom that scores were established along the 



THE ARMY FOOD DRIVE 203 

Lines of Communication in France at every large 
Infantry Base Depot. 

The course of instruction lasts for four weeks. 
For fourteen days the candidate attends daily lec- 
tures on every phase of cooking, from cutting up 
the sides of beef and the reception of uncooked ma- 
terial generally to the preparation of a complete 
meal. He is given a course of talks on diet; he is 
taught to build improvised ovens out of empty bis- 
cuit tins or scrap sheets of iron in case he is with a 
unit that loses its baggage train on the march; he 
is shown how to eliminate waste in every phase of 
kitchen work. 

After two weeks he is put on the job of cooking 
food for the men at the depot to which his school 
is attached. At the end of his period of instruction 
he is required to pass an examination. If he meets 
all requirements he is given a small card which cer- 
tifies that he has completed the course in the School 
of Cookery and it becomes his pass-port into the 
zone of full-fledged army cooks. Since the estab- 
lishment of these schools 42,250 graduate cooks 
have been turned out. They are the Minute Men 
of Army Food Economy. 

The thoroughness of the cookery course is evi- 
denced by many illuminating documents. Typical 
of these is a Manual of Military Cooking and 
Dietary which is the Cook Book of the army. The 
rawest cook in the world could produce something 
eatable by simply following its instructions. It 



I II I II II IIMIHIIM 111 lllllll ■— ■[■■HUB III^WI— III ■■■!■!■■ ^■■■■Ill— i«— ^1^1— ■11—IIHiWlHMIII IIIIIHlWiitf*"* t * l ' fc f^ J F^> 



204 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

shows how every article of food used in the army 
can be used to the best advantage and made to do 
the utmost work in case of a breakdown in food 
transport. Since troops in the field are sometimes 
called upon to impress or buy cattle for their sus- 
tenance there is a chapter on the killing, skinning 
and preparation of the carcass. This section even 
goes to the extent of reproducing pictures of cattle, 
sheep and pigs, showing their various edible parts 
in cross-section. Even with the Cook Book the 
British Army instruction omits no detail. 

There is a series of books dealing with the con- 
struction of Army Ovens. The cook is not only 
taught how to improvise ovens out of scraps, but to 
keep his kitchen tools in good repair. 

A complete word^-of -one-syllable culinary liter- 
ature has been prepared for the Army Cook. One 
of these books is called The Cookhouse and Simple 
Recipes. It is packed with helpful hints on how 
to keep the Cookhouse sanitary ; how to build fires ; 
how to cut up bread, cheese and cake with the least 
possible waste; how to make the most of every 
ration (that is, make sausages, rissoles and other 
combinations out of leavings) and how to manu- 
facture improvised bread slicers and potato peelers. 
It is really a full course in Domestic Science. 

One important feature of the book deals with the 
soldiers' diet sheet. Under the new Army Food 
Regulations every Master Cook is required to make 
out a Weekly Diet Sheet which announces the com- 



THE ARMY FOOD DRIVE 205 

plete menu for the men. It is posted conspicuously 
in the Cookhouse and Mess Rooms every Sunday 
morning. Its chief advantages are that the cooks 
know what to prepare from day to day. While 
the men know what they are going to have. It 
facilitates the ration indent, tends toward economy 
and helps to insure a variety of food. 

The Instructors in Catering are very important 
Army individuals. A Flying Squadron is constant- 
ly on the go making unexpected inspections of 
Cookhouses. In their operations they are akin to 
the Inspectors in the Mechanical Transport, and 
like them, are the terrors of the slacker and the 
sloven. 

The results of every inspection are reported on 
a form which is specially prepared for this pur- 
pose. It records the name of the unit, its station, 
its average daily feeding strength, how the food is 
stored, whether the Master Cook is trained or needs 
training, and finally if a so-called stock-pot is in 
use. The stock-pot is a very important first aid to 
army food saving. It is usually a huge kettle in 
which all surplus and eatable meat and bones are 
dumped and which becomes the sanctuary of the 
justly famous army stew. 

This constant supervision of cooking has not 
only reduced waste but enabled the British Army 
to curtail its rations considerably during 19 17. Two 
ounces a day have been pinched off* the allowance 
of bread stuffs except in the cases of soldiers under 



2o6 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

nineteen who have the prize appetites of the ser- 
vice. The salt ration has been cut down by one- 
fourth of an ounce per man a day and a consider- 
able saving has been effected in the consumption 
of tea. All these items represent a saving in actual 
cash of approximately $20,000,000 a year and the 
economies in this direction have just begun. 

Although this whip-hand over waste reduced the 
ration and eliminated extravagance in the prepara- 
tion of food there was still an enormous sacrifice 
in the kitchen. Every day in the hundreds of army 
cookhouses at home and abroad the leavings from 
plate, dining ta,ble, pot and skillet were dumped in- 
discriminately into the garbage heap. These by- 
products of the army ration represented, in the 
course of a year, thousands of tons of bone and fat 
which had a perfectly good and profitable commer- 
cial use. So the Quartermaster General's Depart- 
ment bestirred itself to utilise all this waste with the 
result that it has built up a huge industry that con- 
veys one of the most useful lessons of the war. 

Two definite causes contributed to this really re- 
markable conversion of refuse into money. The 
first was the daily reminder in the shape of garbage 
that had to be burned. The second and more im- 
portant dealt with that mainstay of all army ad- 
vance — Munitions. As long ago as 191 5 England 
realised that she was paying an excessive price for 
glycerine, which is one of the essentials in the mak- 
ing of high explosives. The soap makers in the 



THE ARMY FOOD DRIVE 207 

United Kingdom notified the government that 
owing to the abnormal price for glycerine — it was 
$1,250 a ton, against the pre-war price of $250 
a ton — the American soap makers were in a posi- 
tion to sell their product abroad at a price with 
which the British manufacturers could not com- 
pete. 

In order to understand the connection between 
soap making and glycerine (from which nitro-gly- 
cerine is made) you must first know that animal fat 
produces soap. One of the by-products of soap 
making, in turn, is the much needed and now highly 
prized glycerine. One hundred pounds of fat pro- 
duces ten pounds of glycerine. Before the war and 
when there was only a normal demand for high ex- 
plosives, glycerine had to be content to occupy a 
place in the industrial catalogue as a mere by- 
product. Since the war the tail wags the dog and 
glycerine is as rare and almost as precious as gold. 
Now you can see why the American soap maker 
could afford to sell his product for a song in the 
United Kingdom. 

No wonder the British soap makers were up in 
arms. They made it very clear to their government 
that if the state of affairs that I have just described 
continued the manufacture of soap at home would 
have to stop and the Government would be entirely 
dependent upon the American market for its supply 
of glycerine and at an excessive price. 

The British Government at once got busy. It 



208 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

prohibited the importation of soap from the United 
States and decided to collect all the fat from the 
army camps and use it for the double purpose of 
producing British-made soap and British glycerine 
for British shells. Here you have one of the many 
side-lights on that growing self-sufficiency of the 
Empire which will be a tremendous weapon when 
the war is over. 

An agreement was entered into between the 
Army, the Government and the soap makers. The 
Army agreed to turn over all the by-products of 
camp and kitchen to the soap makers and the soap 
makers, on their part, undertook to supply the Min- 
istry of Munition with all the glycerine extracted 
from the fat at the pre-war price of $250 a ton. 
The scale of prices for all refuse would depend upon 
the market variations and would be fixed each 
month by a group of manufacturers known as the 
Committee for the Purchase of Army Camp Refuse. 
This Committee is headed by Mr. John W. Hope, 
one of the soap kings of England, and a business 
man of wide and practical experience. 

Now began the great mobilisation of waste prod- 
ucts. It was easier said than done. Here was the 
problem : In thousands of camps the grease and 
bones were dumped out every day. Obviously all 
this litter could not be conveyed to England. It 
had to be reduced to fat on the spot. 

Once more a difficult technical proposition was 
put up to the Army, who met the emergency with 



THE ARMY FOOD DRIVE 209 

customary resource and ingenuity. A chemist in 
the Royal Army Medical Corps, Captain Ellis by 
name, who was an Assistant Inspector of Catering 
and who had been an expert chemical adviser be- 
fore the war, invented an apparatus known as the 
Ellis Field Fat Extracting Plant. In this process 
the rough fat and bones collected from the camps 
are treated in boiling tanks through which super- 
heated steam is passed. The fat is run out, put 
into barrels or kegs and despatched to England to 
the Committee for the Purchase of Army Camp 
Refuse. Altogether eight of these plants are in 
operation in France alone. There are half a dozen 
more in England. They are usually attached to an 
important Infantry Base where cooking is con- 
ducted on a very large scale. 

These Fat Plants are the wholesale establish- 
ments. In order to round up every available scrap 
of refuse all units in the field, no matter how small, 
become sources of supply and represent the retail 
end. These units render the suet skimmings or 
refuse down to what is called dripping, which is 
sent to Collecting Depots in old biscuit and tea tins. 
These Collecting Depots are at smaller Bases, where 
the erection of a plant is not justified. If the drip- 
ping is properly rendered down it is despatched at 
once to England. If not it is sent on to a Field Ex- 
tracting Plant for further treaement. 

There is a complete system of accounting. The 
collection of fat from the armies in the field is or- 



210 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

ganised as follows : The rendered dripping is hand- 
ed in to officers at Rail Head, who give a receipt 
for the weight received. Attached to this receipt 
is a voucher for the cash due the unit. This voucher 
is legal tender at any army canteen. The money is 
used by the men to buy additional luxuries such as 
fresh vegetables or fruit. Often the proceeds of 
their kitchen economy are devoted to the purchase 
of utensils to improve the Mess arrangements of 
the unit such as extra dishes, cruets and bacon cut- 
ters. 

When dripping is sent direct to the Fat Extract- 
ing Plant an account is opened for each unit and 
it is credited with every installment which it sends 
in. Here, as in the field, vouchers are attached to 
every receipt and they can be handed in at the can- 
teens as payment for supplies. 

I visited one of these Field Fat Extracting Plants 
Somewhere in France. It was located near an im- 
portant Supply Depot, where thousands of men 
were camped. It proclaimed its presence long be- 
fore I reached it. It was like approaching Packing- 
town in Chicago when the wind was in the wrong 
direction. In charge was a young lieutenant who 
before this war had encountered nothing stronger 
in the way of odours than the breeze from the 
Thames. Now he laboured in the midst of a fright- 
ful stench. He had been wounded twice, as his two 
sleeve stripes showed, and might have had a soft 
desk job at home. But he was willing to stick it 



THE ARMY FOOD DRIVE 211 

out on a task that he frankly admitted was much 
more trying than fighting Germans. 

The plant was as busy as it was smelly. Every 
now and then a big army motor truck would rattle 
up with a load of garbage. Special containers are 
used which bear the number of their army unit. Off 
to one side was a swill warehouse. All the leav- 
ings of the rendering plant together with accumu- 
lated potato peelings are sold to the French farm- 
ers for hog food at fifty cents a barrel. The busi- 
ness at this particular place was so extensive that 
a bookkeeper was constantly employed to keep 
track of its affairs. 

The conversion of actual meat refuse into fat 
for soap making is only due phase of the utilisation 
of waste products. Bones compete with drippings 
in salvage importance. After all the fat is boiled 
out of the bones — (one hundred pounds of bone pro- 
duce ten pounds of fat) — the remains are used for 
the manufacture of tooth and nail brushes, while 
the small pieces are crushed and sold for fertiliser. 

Even the scraps from the soldiers' plates are util- 
ised. When you go to an Army Mess Hall you will 
observe that every soldier files out plate in hand. 
Outside the door he stops at a tub and scrapes all 
the leavings on the dish into it. These leavings are 
dried and chopped up for chicken food. Bread 
crumbs are treated the same way. 

The system which assembles Army Refuse is as 
complete as scientific business methods can devise. 



212 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

In every Army Cookhouse hangs a comprehensive 
chart issued by the Committee for the Purchase of 
Army Camp Refuse, which shows how recoveries 
of fat are made. From this chart the cook can see 
how to cut off suet, trimmings and so-called 
"butcher's fat" from the raw material; how to get 
cracklings, skimmings and all scraps from the 
processes of cooking; how to retrieve sausage skins, 
bacon rind, the marrow from bone after the food 
is served — in fact, how to utilise every possible 
square inch of food that passes through his hands. 
This economy has almost become a vice because an 
Army Order had to be issued last September re- 
questing cooks not to pare down their trimmings 
for glycerine fat too close. The actual food supply 
was sometimes impaired through overzeal. This 
resulted from competition between units to secure 
high figures in the monthly by-products return. 

The cost of setting up and operating the Fat Ex- 
tracting Plants is obtained from a Central Fund 
created by retaining a small difference between the 
price obtained for the fat from the Committee for 
the Purchase of Army Camp Refuse and the price 
paid the Units for the waste material. This fund 
is administered by the Inspection Department of 
the Quartermaster General's Service. Out of it is 
paid the cost of erection of factories, labour and the 
maintenance of the various Collecting Depots. 

I can give you no better idea of the results of 
these salvage operations than to say that last year 



THE ARMY FOOD DRIVE 213 

enough glycerine was obtained from army fat to 
provide the propellant for 18,000,000 eighteen- 
pound shells. This means that approximately 1,800 
tons of glycerine were obtained from the refuse of 
the camp kitchens. This glycerine, sold to the Min- 
istry of Munitions at the pre-war price of $250 a 
ton, meant a net saving of $1,000 a ton, or exactly 
$1,800,000. In addition to this the soldier got the 
benefit of many luxuries which made him much 
more contented and therefore more efficient. 

The gross income from the sale of by-products 
alone last year was $3,940,000. Add to this the 
saving in the cost of glycerine and the value of the 
reduction in rations brought about by the super- 
vision of cooking and other economies and you get 
a total saving estimated to be not less than $30,- 
000,000. A larger phase of this conservation lies 
in the fact that it enabled a considerable amount of 
food to be released to the general public. At the 
same time the Army and Navy got all its soap free 
of charge, which is part of the contract with the 
Committee for the Purchase of Army Refuse. At 
Salonika the British Army not only renders all its 
fat, but conducts its own soap factory. 

So successful and wide-spread is the army refuse 
business that a company had to be formed to run it. 
It is under the jurisdiction of the Army Council 
and is called the Army Waste Products Company, 
Ltd. It is organised and operated just like any 
British Corporation. The Quartermaster General 



2i4 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

to all the Forces, Lieutenant General Sir John S. 
Cowans, is President, while Major General F. W. 
B. Landon, Chief Inspector of the Quartermaster 
General's Services, is Vice President and General 
Manager. Although the capital is only seven shill- 
ings—about $1.75 — it does a business in all its 
branches of many millions of dollars a year. It 
could pay dividends that would compare favorably 
with some of the "melons" cut by successful Ameri- 
can concerns. 

More important perhaps than these imposing 
profits is the permanent lesson to every man who 
touches the salvage system. He realises an asset 
that will be a bulwark for his future. He will go 
back to peace not only richer in experience but more 
frugal in habit. The army cook, for instance, 
disciplined in economy with Government property, 
will instinctively husband his own. It will estab- 
lish the precedent for his whole family. 

This contact with conservation is full brother to 
that other and equally constructive preachment em- 
bodied in the lesson of the War Savings Certificate, 
which has taught the Briton to think in terms of 
thrift and which is now happily becoming a part of 
American economic life. 

The whole British Army Salvage Scheme empha- 
sises the need of a Junk and Refuse Dictator in 
the United States for a control of Salvage would 
save it untold millions and help to shorten the war. 
It also points the world a way to a retrenchment in 



THE ARMY FOOD DRIVE 215 



money and materials that is in many respects the 
most valuable dividend yet declared by the Business 
of War. 

War is not all Waste. 



IX — The Wares of War 



WHEREVER you journey in the zones 
of the armies you cannot fail to be 
impressed with the almost ceaseless 
movement of ammunition trains. Day and 
night the lorries and wagons rumble up and 
down the beaten highways hauling the deadly 
freight which is as precious and priceless as food. 
Turn from the road and your eye lights upon the 
familiar white and blue flag which indicates the 
presence of the ammunition "dump." 

After the Commissariat the question of shell sup- 
ply is the most important in the war. Preponder- 
ance of munition resource gave Germany her first 
great advantage in the conflict. It took Great 
Britain more than a year to catch up. 

Ammunition provides one of the stupendous 
items of war expenditure both in material and 
money. This is a war of ammunition. In the first 
battle of the Somme, for example, more shells were 
expended in a week than were used in the whole 
Boer War. The appetites of the iron mouths are 
never appeased. 

The average visitor to the war regards the pro- 
vision of shells and guns as a matter of course. 
But, like Supply and Transport, it is a perfectly or- 
ganised, well-oiled and admirably conducted annex 

216 



JHE WARES OF WAR 217 

of the Business of War — just another cog in a mar- 
vellous machine. 

With this phase of operation you leave the Do- 
main of the Quartermaster General and enter the 
Bailiwick of the Master General of Ordnance, 
whose task is to provide arms of all description, 
guns and gun carriages, ammunition, vehicles which 
are mainly mechanical transport, and telephone and 
telegraph stores. The principal items, however, are 
guns and ammunition. Instead of looking to the 
Surveyor General of Supply to stock his grim 
shelves as is the case with food and general equip- 
ment, he is allied with the Minister of Munitions, 
who is the Master Merchandiser of the Wares of 
War. 

Again you have the spectacle of a titanic agency 
of supply. It is as far-flung as the war itself. It 
ranges from the factories of the United States and 
Canada to the controlled establishments of England 
and Scotland where millions of men and women, 
recruited from all ranks, labour day and night in 
the eternal effort to feed the hungry maws of gun, 
trench mortar and rifle. As Britain's home sources 
of shell supply have grown she has become less de- 
pendent upon her overseas Allies. The Ministry of 
Munitions to-day is almost self -sufficient. 

No evidence of England's war expansion is more 
eloquent or illuminating than the rise of this stu- 
pendous engine of production. From a small room 
in Whitehall in London where a few devoted en- 



218 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

gineers, ship-builders, chemists and inventors ral- 
lied around Lloyd George in 191 5, it has grown 
into a vast business which operates directly or indi- 
rectly more than four thousand factories and em- 
ploys in its inspection work alone, an army almost 
equal to the entire First Seven Divisions — Eng- 
land's regular army — which rushed to the relief of 
Belgium. It has been the largest contributing 
factor to England's industrial development; it has 
enriched science, stimulated research; it will be 
Britain's mechanical bulwark when the war is over 
and the bloodless trade conflicts of peace begin. 

With ammunition, as with every other detail, 
this war has smashed all precedents and established 
amazing standards of scope and output. In the 
Boer War the 4.7 gun was the heaviest employed; 
in this war the armies in the field use twelve and 
fifteen inch howitzers that weigh, with their car- 
riages, more than two hundred tons. In the Boer 
War 500 rounds of ammunition were considered a 
large supply for a gun; to-day no gun would re- 
gard itself well supplied with less than 5,000. Now 
you can get some idea of the demands made upon 
shell factories. 

You get a further conception of ammunition 
needs when I go on to say that leaving out rifle 
and revolver cartridges, which must be supplied by 
the hundreds of millions, the Ministry of Muni- 
tions is called upon to produce shells for twelve dif- 
ferent calibres of cannon, ranging from the three- 



THE WARES OF WAR 219 

inch anti-aircraft guns — the "Archies' ' — to fifteen- 
inch howitzers. Not only must these guns be fed 
incessantly but an immense reserve is absolutely 
necessary in every theatre of war. This means 
that the "M.G.O.," as the Master General of Ord- 
nance is called, is required to have his own fleet 
of ammunition ships whose crews are carefully 
trained in the handling of high explosives. In some 
of the compartments of these ships the workers 
wear felt slippers in order to minimise the danger 
of explosion. 

In any study of shell supply the first and most 
natural question is : How does the Ministry of Mu- 
nitions know what and how much to make? With 
food this task is comparatively easy. The Quarter- 
master General is told how many men must be fed 
everywhere and since there is a definite ration it 
becomes a simple matter of mathematics. 

With ammunition the operation is almost identi- 
cal. Here, as with Supply, the organisation is care- 
fully charted and diagramed. At the War Office, 
in addition to the Master General of Ordnance, is 
a Director of Artillery, who is the link between 
Supply and Demand. He has an opposite number 
in the field known as the Director of Ordnance 
Services, who is established at General Headquar- 
ters in France or at the headquarters of the other 
overseas armies. 

The Director of Ordnance Services is the apex of 
a pyramid which extends to every army in the field. 



220 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

His voice and interpreter is a Deputy Director of 
Ordnance Services, who, in turn, is represented by 
Assistant Deputies of Ordnance Services. Carry- 
ing the service straight into the zones of the fight- 
ing armies you find that with each Division there 
is a Deputy Assistant Director of Ordnance Ser- 
vices, or "Dados" as he is commonly known. He 
corresponds to the Senior Supply Officer who makes 
the food demands for a division. 

The Director of Artillery at the War Office is in 
constant touch by telephone and telegraph with the 
Director of Ordnance Services at G.H.Q. He 
knows how many guns are in commission and just 
what they need. Each gun, big or little, can only 
be fired a certain number of times during every 
twenty-four hours. Provision therefore is made 
according to these needs. In the case of a big push 
which is always inaugurated with an immense bom- 
bardment, advance orders are sent in from the 
field: the munition factories are speeded up and 
tremendous reserves are accumulated. When the 
iron dogs are unleashed they can bark with unre- 
strained fury. 

It was not always so. During that first terrible 
twelve months of war when German preparedness 
took its frightful toll in Belgium and Flanders the 
British guns were well-nigh impotent. Shells had 
to be husbanded just like sugar was hoarded a few 
years later. But all that was part of the unhappy 
task. Thanks to the patriotism of British labour, 



THE WARES OF WAR 221 

and particularly to that million of women workers, 
England to-day has a surplus of ammunition, some 
of which has been generously placed at the disposal 
of her Allies, including the United States. 

To visualise this colossal business of shell supply 
let me take you for a brief visit to the greatest of 
British arsenals— oldest in point of service, and 
whose personnel alone affords some idea of the ex- 
pansion in munitions labour. In August, 19 14, the 
staff consisted of 10,866 persons. Now it amounts 
to 73,571. The number of women employed in 19 14 
was 125 ; to-day it is close on to 25,000. In order 
to provision a part of these workers thirty-five can- 
teens have had to be established. 

At this great arsenal only components of shells 
are produced. Each shell, it is interesting to know, 
is the sum of many items. The cartridges are made 
in one place, tubes and fuses in another, propellants 
in a third. All these parts must be "married/' as 
the phrase goes, into a complete round. This 
"marriage" is consummated at the National Filling 
Factories, of which there are seventeen throughout 
Great Britain. Their capacity is considerably more 
than 50,000 tons a week. This output would cover 
five acres of space and would require 5,000 railway 
trucks for transport. 

Each one of these Filling Factories has a specific 
task. Some fill shells; others fill cartridges, while 
still others assemble the 18-pounder ammunition. 
Four of them fill fuses and tubes exclusively. 



222 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

The great arsenal to which I have referred hap- 
pens to be a combination of all ammunition ac- 
tivities in that it produces component parts and 
fills. Here you see acres of shells of every kind 
and description. The deadly high explosives — 
"H.E." — are always yellow in color and are 
handled with much greater care than any other type. 
The field gun shells are black. The large ones are 
in wicker baskets to expedite handling and look like 
jugs of death. 

An ammunition supply Depot is something like 
the great Base Supply Depots operated by the Quar- 
termaster General. Everything is systematised. The 
munitions are kept in huge storehouses. The officer 
in charge of each one of these structures is re- 
quired to keep what is called Storehouse Tally, 
which is a complete and up-to-the-minute record 
of supplies received and issued, Thus he can tell 
at any time just how many shells of every variety 
he has on hand. Since there is always the hazard 
of air raids each battalion of shells is safeguarded 
by piles of sand -bags. The precautions against fire 
are most stringent. The penalty against smoking 
is everything but death. 

The same system follows the ammunition from 
the moment it leaves the storehouse or the Filling 
Factory to the ship, where it is loaded for France, 
Salonika, Egypt, Mesopotamia or Africa. Indeed, 
a record is kept of every shell until it goes into the 
gun. 




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THE WARES OF WAR 223 

The system of railway transport in England is 
typical of the completeness of the organisation. 
For every railway truck there is an army truck 
card which contains a description of the stores, the 
number of shells, the hour loaded and the destina- 
tion. A duplicate of this truck card is kept at the 
storehouse ; another goes with the car as a voucher. 
It is tacked on the outside so that the receiving 
officer can check up the freight at once. A com- 
plete ammunition train consists of fifty trucks. More 
than one thousand trucks are loaded every day, and 
there is a continuous procession of trains rushing 
daily toward the three ports in the south of Eng- 
land, where every night the ships depart with their 
cargoes of destruction. Each ship carries a mani- 
fest of its freight in duplicate. One of these is re- 
tained by the receiving officer in France or else- 
where, while the other goes back as a receipt for 
goods received. 

Coincident with the departure of the ammunition 
ship a telegram is sent to the Director of Ordnance 
Service at G.H.Q. apprising him of the shipment. 
This wire is in no way an advice for shipping pur- 
poses, but is sent to give the D. O. S. immediate 
information abou,t what he is receiving. Here 
again you get illuminating evidence of the value of 
knowledge in warfare. As in the supply of food 
the whole aim is to give the fighting man immediate 
intelligence of what is being done for him. It is 
the antidote of worry. Long experience has proved 



224 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

that anxiety about supplies in war is far more 
deadly than enemy bullets. 

With ammunition distribution you find another 
interesting parallel with food. Some of the ships 
carrying munitions use the French ports that sup- 
ply the Northern Lines of Communication, while 
others make the southern ports for the Southern 
Lines. Immediately upon their arrival across the 
Channel the shells are landed, loaded into trucks 
and distributed to the various base and field Supply 
Depots under instructions from General Headquar- 
ters. 

In France there are six immense ammunition 
depots, three on the Northern Line and three on 
the Southern. Each Depot keeps a supply of 35,000 
tons of ammunition. This includes about 17,500 
tons of boxed ammunition, 14,000 tons of heavy 
ammunition and 3,500 tons of trench warfare stores 
and small-arm ammunition. 

Ammunition is issued at each Depot and con- 
signed to certain rail heads in the field which be- 
come, in turn, the distributing points for the fight- 
ing units. These rail heads have a certain number 
of Army and Corps dumps to supply. I might 
state right here that any accumulation of ammuni- 
tion in the field is called a dump. The word is self- 
explanatory. A dump may be an open field by 
the roadside, where the shells are stacked up on 
boards and covered with heavily camouflaged tar- 
paulins, or a temporary storehouse. The enemy 



THE WARES OF WAR 225 

would rather bombard an ammunition depot than 
successfully raid a trench. There is always a heav- 
ily armed guard at these dumps and they invariably 
fly a white flag with a square blue field. This flag 
is the emblem of what is known as the Divisional 
Ammunition Column. 

The transport of ammunition in the field is a very 
difficult proposition. From rail head to dump the 
three and five-ton motor trucks are used. They 
are always marked with a white shell and take 
precedence over all other traffic. From the dump 
up to the firing line our old and tried friend, the 
Horse Transport, is the carrier. As with food, these 
horse and mule-drawn vehicles are the patient and 
unswerving link with actual battle. They usually 
go up at night when the way is dark and full of 
troubles. In the first battle of the Somme and in 
Haig's great push in Flanders last November when 
the weather remained persistently pro-German and 
the roads became so nearly impassable that even 
Horse Transport could not be used thousands of 
shells had to be sent up to the front on the backs 
of mules and horses and were even carried by hand. 

Some shells, however, are so huge that they re- 
quire mechanical transport. A whole system of 
tractors is engaged solely in the work of convey- 
ing howitzer ammunition from rail head to battery. 
In some instances light railways are used. I cite 
these facts merely to show how infinite is the vari- 



226 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

ety of specialised labour imposed upon the armies 
in the field. 

The item of gun supply does not call for any 
elaborate explanation. Just as a lathe is a lathe, 
a gun is a gun. The Master General of Ordnance 
is charged with the task of renewing old ordnance 
and supplying new cannon. Except where a gun is 
absolutely put out of commission by a shell it is sal- 
vaged and in eighty per cent of cases is restored to 
service. Throughout the zones of fighting you find 
so-called Gun Parks where you see row after row 
of guns of all calibres with limbers and other equip- 
ment ready to take their place in the battle line. 
Once more the reserve supply is the insurance 
against disaster. 

Ordnance in this war means a great deal more 
than shells and guns. As a matter of specific fact 
it includes not less than eight thousand items, which 
range from a nail to a fire engine. They come 
under the head of what is technically known as 
Ordnance Stores. The provision of this well-nigh 
incredible mass of commodities is under the gen- 
eral supervision of the Quartermaster General, 
whose chief Aide is the official known as the Direc- 
tor of Equipment and Ordnance Stores. 

If you want to get some notion of what Ordnance 
Stores means just take a trip to Woolwich and look 
at the so-called Ordnance Stores Museum. Here 
you will find a sample of every one of the eight 
thousand items included in the Vocabulary, which 



THE WARES OF WAR 227 

is the Bible of Ordnance Stores Supply. Every 
one of these items is sealed with the red War Office 
seal, which means that it is a pattern and has been 
officially adopted by the army. It ranges from 
camp chairs to field communion sets. Contractors 
who want to compete for army bids come here and 
examine the models. Sometimes a model is sent to a 
local Chamber of Commerce located in a city which 
happens to be a centre of a manufacturing district. 

The matter of Ordnance Stores in the army is, 
of course, vitally important. In order to prevent 
omission of any article what is called a Mobilisation 
Stores Table is provided for each unit whether it 
be an infantry battalion, battery of light or heavy 
artillery, or hospital corps. This Table serves as a 
record of the war equipment of the unit. It item- 
ises every article needed by the unit. In the con- 
crete case of an Infantry Battalion it includes such 
articles as bags, mess tins, whistles, pistols, wire 
cutters, web equipment, which includes belts, braces, 
haversacks, packs and carriers for cartridges and 
entrenching tools, bugles, drums, axes, buckets, 
cooking utensils, ropes, horse blankets, shovels, har- 
ness, saddles, compasses, blankets, bicycles, stretch- 
ers, arms, clothing and scores of other commodi- 
ties too numerous to mention. 

Despite this immense number of stores a com- 
plete record is kept of every item. The Quarter- 
master of the unit is held responsible for issue and 
consumption. 



228 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

The provision of these Ordnance Stores is in itself 
a full-sized job. It is as completely and as scien- 
tifically organised as the contracting and purveying 
of food. In fact it is a replica of the system adopt- 
ed by the Surveyor General of Supply and which 
has been described in a previous chapter. The speci- 
fications are printed and sent to prospective bidders. 
Once the contract is made the goods automatically 
pass under an incessant scrutiny. This is techni- 
cally known as Inspection of Ordnance Stores. 

The inspectors are called Viewers. They are 
civilians drafted from mill and factory who are the 
best experts available. Each Viewer has a specialty. 
It may be iron, wood or wool. At Woolwich, for 
example, which is the centre of an extensive in- 
spection district, there is an admirable system of 
keeping tab on the work. Each inspector is indi- 
cated by a flag which is the colour of the type of 
work he inspects. A red flag indicates iron work; 
the blue is wood, and so on. Each man's name is 
on his flag. If the Chief Viewer wants to know 
where John Jones, wood inspector, is, he simply 
looks at a huge chart on the wall and finds his flag. 
If John Jones is inspecting at Manchester the flag 
will be stuck in the circle marked "Manchester," If 
he has need of John Jones' services in a nearby city 
he can at once assign him to the contract without 
delay. It is the science of business having just 
one more manifestation in the work of the war. 



X — A Visit to Sir Douglas Haig 

FOR days I had run the gamut of the guns; 
ranged the whole long British battle-line 
until the world seemed a chaos of trench 
and traffic shaken by a deadly din. Suddenly I 
came to a quiet backwater in this whirlpool of war. 

It was a modest chateau well off the beaten road, 
so screened by French poplars that its quietude sug- 
gested the aloof and untroubled days of peace. The 
red flag that fluttered at the gate, the presence of 
more than the usual number of sentries, the distant 
rumble of artillery, were the only external evidences 
that this secluded house which basked in the winter 
sun was linked with the world's greatest conflict. 

Yet amid those friendly trees is the nerve centre 
of the mightiest English military machine ever 
created; from its pleasant drawing room that looks 
out upon an Old- World garden are issued the com- 
mands at which millions of armed men leap to ac- 
tion; toward it countless anxious hearts turn every 
day for the tidings of cheer or despair. For here 
are the headquarters of Field Marshal Sir Douglas 
Haig, Commander-in-Chief of all the British 
Armies in France and Flanders. 

I have seen army and corps headquarters far 
more pretentious than the domicile that shelters 
the chieftain of them all. It is characteristic of the 

229 



230 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

silent soldier who literally wields the power of life 
and death that the seat of his fateful authority 
should be like the man himself — simple, dignified, 
impressive. You get a hint of Haig before you see 
him. 

The environment of the Commander-in-Chief is 
strongly suggestive of his conduct of the war. Be- 
fore war became a thing of precise science the head- 
quarters of an army head seethed with all the pic- 
turesque details so common to pictures of martial 
life. Couriers mounted on foam-decked horses 
dashed to and fro ; the air was vibrant with action ; 
the fate of battle showed on the face of the hum- 
blest orderly. 

But to-day headquarters are totally different Al- 
though army units have arisen from thousands to 
millions of men, and fields of operations stretch 
from sea to sea, and more ammunition is expended 
in a single engagement than was employed in entire 
wars of other days, absolute serenity prevails. It 
is only when your imagination conjures up the pic- 
ture of flame and fury that lies beyond the horizon 
line that you get a thrill. 

An occasional motor car driven by a soldier- 
chauffeur chugs up the gravel road to the chateau, 
and from it emerge earnest- faced officers whose 
visits are usually brief. Neither time nor words 
are wasted when myriad lives hang in the balance 
and an empire is at stake. Inside and out there is 




From a Drawing by Francis Dodd. 

FIELD MARSHAL SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 231 

an atmosphere of quiet confidence, born of unob- 
trusive efficiency. 

This is due first to the fact that it is the Haig 
way of doing things; second to the consideration 
that war now is a vast and well-oiled industry, car- 
ried on with such perfect organisation that to the 
American trained to study the mechanics of huge 
corporations in his own country it seems strangely 
familiar. Make the most elemental comparison and 
you see at once how close the parallel is. 

That modest chateau hemmed in by poplars is 
nothing more or less than the executive office of 
the deadliest but best organised business in the 
world. It houses the mainspring of the most colos- 
sal system of merchandising that commerce has 
ever known. Strip away the glamour and you have 
merely merchandising with men instead of goods. 
You have every consecutive process of business evo- 
lution. Instead of representing the conversion of 
pig iron into motors you have the translation of 
raw human material into expert fighting men. 

The Commander-in-Chief bears the same relation 
to the carrying on of war that a master sales mana- 
ger bears to the dissemination of a product. His 
task is to deploy his output where it can hit the 
hardest, and on the success of his alinement his 
cause stands or falls. 

What would represent profit in trade is here ex- 
pressed in terms of advance; in territory gained. 



232 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

The highest dividend is victory, the permanent 
aftermath is peace and liberty. 

Study Haig and the British Army at close range 
and you find that War is Work — the most difficult, 
desperate and unremitting labour that the hand and 
brain of man ever devised. The price of freedom, 
as fought for on the battlefields of Europe to-day, is 
infinite but organised toil knit by sacrifice and fed 
by patriotism. 

To write of Sir Douglas Haig is to write not 
only of the conspicuous military leadership, but 
also of the kindling response that an untrained and 
undisciplined people made to organised and long- 
pending aggression. 

Ever since the beginning of the present war the 
average American has constantly asked himself: 
"How is a war involving millions of men and ex- 
tending over an immense area conducted ?" He is 
baffled by problems of transport and communica- 
tion, demand and supply. Shells are no respecters 
of hunger or sleep. He marvels that armies of two 
nations speaking different languages and operating 
in separate spheres can co-operate and co-ordinate. 
All this and much more piles up the huge question : 
"How is it done?" 

You find much of the answer crystallised in one 
word — team-work. It is the essence of the for- 
mula which expresses the success of Sir Douglas 
Haig and explains the advance of the British Army. 
If, such a thing were possible you would find it 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 233 

emblazoned over the doorway of that unassuming 
headquarters chateau "somewhere in France." 

Thus the get-together idea, which in war spells 
the brotherhood of the firing line, lies at the very 
root of all that the British khakied host has 
achieved on the Western front. Its guide, com- 
pass and friend is the Commander-in-Chief. At his 
disposal are placed the human battalions; all the 
materials with which to feed and fight. Up to him 
is put squarely the task of translating these units 
into victory. 

To get at the procedure you must first have some 
revelation of the man, his personality and his meth- 
ods. In them are reflected the whole process by 
which battle is made. Know them and you learn 
what costly and actual experience alone can teach — 
that the path of glory is paved with innumerable 
unromantic and lustreless details, and that the 
soldier who goes forth to do or die is a cog in a 
mighty and militant machine. 

You have only to carry the analogy with com- 
merce one step further to discover the thing that 
dominates and makes possible every important 
American co-operative undertaking ; namely, a high- 
ly centralised direction vested with complete author- 
ity. In this case it happens to be the Commander- 
in-Chief, or, in plain business terms, General Mana- 
ger of the British Armies, Unlimited. 

Disclose the Haig make-up and you also reveal 
the human stuff that leads the forlorn hope. It is 



234 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

the universal fibre of the British soldier. The 
moral of it is that you can not get away from that 
ancient maxim : "Like officers, like men." 

To the human interest historian Haig presents a 
curious paradox. Ask any man that you meet cas- 
ually in London what he knows about the Com- 
mander-in-Chief of the British Armies and he will 
reply at once : "Why, he is a great soldier." Press 
him for further illuminating facts and the chances 
are that he will hesitate and then say : "The fact is, 
I don't really know any more." It would be a typi- 
cal experience in the hunt for Haig data. 

The first of the many striking things about Sir 
Douglas Haig lies in the amazing anomaly that 
although his name appears every day in millions of 
newspapers throughout the world (he signs the 
daily reports of British operations in France), he is 
perhaps the least advertised factor in all the tre- 
mendous drama that he directs. When you meet 
him you discover the reason. 

He is the personification of personal modesty — 
not the professional modesty which is one of the 
surest roads to publicity — but a deep-seated and 
sincere aversion to exploitation. He shuns the spot- 
light. 

I have talked with men who have been his com- 
rades from South Africa to the Somme. Save for 
the most superficial information they know nothing 
about him except that he has "made good" wherever 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 235 

he has been put. "He doesn't talk much; he is a 
Fifer," they say. 

Right here you get the first ray of light on the 
Haig reserve, for he was born in that little kingdom 
of Fife, where courage is as adamant as its granite 
hills and whence sprung the Clan MacDuff, fore- 
most fighters of a fighting race. The imperturb- 
ability of those brooding hills is in his soul. It has 
helped to make him the soldier that he is. 

It girded him with the strength and perseverance 
to lead the famous ride to the relief of Kimberley; 
it bore him through the historic retreat from Mons ; 
it sustained and fortified him when he rode serenely 
down the shattered line of Ypres and gave life and 
lift to one of the most brilliant stands that military 
resistance has known. Sir Douglas had cut his 
fighting teeth when he succeeded Lord French as 
Commander-in-Chief in France. 

Despite his long record of achievement his name 
was far from being a household word like that of 
Kitchener and Roberts. But the important fact was 
that the troops knew him, knew to their pride and 
to their satisfaction that the new leader, like the 
old, had been flame-tried, and not found wanting. 

I like to remember my first glimpse of the Field 
Marshal. It came after unforgettable days and 
nights with armies that flirted with death above 
and upon the ground. His name ran like a strain 
up and down the line. I had watched troops re- 
turning from a raid that had netted a good bag of 



236 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

prisoners and heard the jubilant officer say: "This 
will be good news for the Chief at G.H.Q." It 
was more like the enthusiasm of a football player 
after a hard-won game than the satisfaction which 
followed a desperate dash that took its toll of youth 
and blood. But it was typical of what the man on 
the job thought of the man higher up; and it ex- 
pressed also, I might add, the spirit of the Eng- 
lish officer who looks upon war as a great adventure. 

And so it came about that after a vicarious ap- 
prenticeship to the trade of war I came upon its 
master workman. It was a brilliant sunlit winter 
day. Behind me on the main highways I had left 
the endless ammunition trains, the trailing squad- 
rons of motor trucks, the rattling processions of 
artillery — all the clatter and paraphernalia of war 
transport. Only the boom of guns still pounded in 
my ears. They had echoed so long that they seemed 
part of the very noises of nature. 

We turned off the chief artery of traffic and trav- 
elled for miles along sequestered ways. Soon a 
single chateau loomed above its ivied walls and al- 
most before I realised it we had run the gauntlet 
of the sentries at the gate and had brought up be- 
fore a doorway that would have delighted the heart 
of an architectural enthusiast. 

There was the usual courteous greeting so in- 
stinctive with the British officer whether you wade 
up to him through the mud of a trench or meet him 
amid the comforts of humane habitation. 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 237 

In France all the headquarters of the various 
British armies are very much alike in that they are 
established in chateaux. And instead of being com- 
mandeered, after the German fashion, they are 
rented and paid for in pursuance of the laws of 
decency and honour. Whether by accident or de- 
sign, the General Headquarters are smaller and 
more unpretentious than any of the others. One- 
reason, perhaps, is that Sir Douglas Haig is sur- 
rounded only by his personal staff ; the other officers 
who comprise his field cabinet live in other quarters. 

The establishment over which the Commander-in- 
Chief presides is practically as its owners left it. 
A few years before laughing children had played 
in its park and glad voices had resounded through 
the rooms that stretched behind. Although 
now an outpost of war, it still breathed some of the 
gentle atmosphere of peace. The continuous jangle 
of the telephone was the only harsh sound that 
broke what seemed to all intents and purposes the 
ordinary calm of a well-ordered French country 
house. Save for that and the constant movement 
of officers you would never guess that from within 
these walls issue the orders that, translated into 
action, are changing the map of the world. 

The chateau that the Commander-in-Chief occu- 
pied prior to the time when I visited him was even 
less touched by war. It was still tenanted by the 
old French family, whose home it had been for years 
and who inhabited one of the wings. Hence it came 



238 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 



about that in those soul-stirring days, when the 
first Somme offensive was being planned and exe- 
cuted, the voices of children running up and down 
the halls mingled with the incessant murmur of the 
guns and the work of that devoted band of men 
who were directing one of the most stupendous 
operations in the history of all war. 

The moment you enter "G.H.Q." you feel that 
you have established a contact with something sig- 
nificant. I do not mean that there is the slightest 
tension, but whether it is the play of the imagina- 
tion or not, you acknowledge an authority that you 
have never felt before. It is the unconscious tribute 
you pay to the personality that dominates the place. 

The desks, maps and eternal telephone are in 
sharp contrast with the ancient furniture and works 
of art that still remain in the house. The old fam- 
ily portraits look down solemnly upon you from the 
walls. They hear and see strange things these 
strenuous days — nothing stranger than the spectacle 
of the once detested English in the role of defender 
of the invaded and beloved France. 

I sat chatting with a young staff officer in one 
of the small anterooms that led off from the main 
hall. His telephone bell rang incessantly. Dur- 
ing the lull the door to my right opened and re- 
mained open after a military secretary had passed 
out. 

I looked through the doorway and saw a tall, 
lithe, well-knit man with the insignia of a field 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 239 

marshal on his shoulder straps. He sat at a plain, 
flat-topped desk earnestly studying a report. In a 
moment he straightened up, pushed a button, and 
my companion said : — 

"The Commander-in-Chief will see you now." 

I found myself in a presence that, even without 
the slightest clue to its profession, would have un- 
consciously impressed itself as military. Dignity, 
distinction and a gracious reserve mingled in his 
bearing. I have rarely seen a masculine face so 
handsome and yet so strong. His hair and mous- 
tache are fair, and his clear, almost steely blue eyes 
catch you, but not unkindly. His chest is broad 
and deep, yet scarcely broad enough for the rows 
of service and other ribbons that plant a mass of 
colour against the background of khaki. 

The Commander-in-Chief's cavalry training sticks 
out all over him. You see it in the long, shapely 
lines of his legs, and in the rounded calves encased 
in perfectly polished boots, with their jingle of sil- 
ver spurs. He stands easily and gracefully, and 
walks with that rangy, swinging stride so common, 
oddly enough, to men who ride much. He was a 
famous fox hunter in his student days at Oxford, 
and never, save in times of utmost crisis, does he 
forego his daily gallop. To him the motor is a 
business vehicle, never meant for sport or pleasure. 
In brief, Sir Douglas Haig is the literal personifica- 
tion of the phrase "every inch a soldier. ,, 

I have seen most of the chiefs of the Allied 



240 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Armies in this war. It is no depreciation of any of 
them to say that the Commander-in-Chief of the 
British Army is the best-groomed and most soldierly 
looking of them all. He has none of the paternal 
quality which impresses you the moment you see 
Joffre; he is smarter and more alert in appearance 
than Nivelle; he has the trim, well-set-up presence 
of Pershing. Amid all the racking burden of a 
super-responsibility, he remains a cheerful, inter- 
ested human being, who can forget in the distrac- 
tion of lay discussion the agonies that lurk almost 
within gunshot of his residence. 

The room which is to-day the Capital of Brit- 
ish military sovereignty in France is a conventional 
drawing room which, like the rest of the house, 
maintains practically every detail of the original 
furnishing. But it is a soldier's workshop, never- 
theless, and with all the working tools. 

Chief among them is an immense relief map of 
the whole Somme region. It rests on a large table 
just behind the Field Marshal's desk. Over this inert 
and unresponsive mass of grey-and-green clay, criss- 
crossed with red lines, he has pondered through 
many a wakeful hour. On it is written the whole 
triumphant story of that great advance which reg- 
istered a new glory for British arms. 

I could not help thinking as I sat there before a 
blazing fire what a great place in history that simple 
room would have; how in years to come it would 
be known as the real setting of the decisive phase 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 241 

of the Great War so far as land operations are con- 
cerned. We spoke of many things that winter day 
in France; of America, of world politics, of the 
spiritual aftermath of the war — strange contrast 
that it was to the business of slaughter that raged 
around us. 

His voice is low and deep — almost musical. He 
is as sparing of words as he is of men. In his con- 
versation he reminds me of some of those great 
American captains of capital — men like Rogers, 
Ryan and Harriman, who, like himself, believed in 
action and not speech ; men, too, who minimised the 
value of their own utterances, and who, when drawn 
out of the shell of their taciturnity, disclosed views 
of force and originality. 

Like many men of great reserve, the Field Mar- 
shal would rather face the jaws of death than an 
interviewer. Indeed, you might count on the fin- 
gers of one hand the number of times that he has 
actually talked for publication, and then have some 
to spare. 

Yet this quiet man, at whose command the very 
earth trembles with passion and noise, is very 
human. One of the ironies of this war is that the 
most inhuman of professions is directed by the most 
human of men. 

He asked me what I thought of the work of the 
armies in the field. I told him that after their 
efficiency, morale, and splendid team-work, one of 
the things that impressed me most was the youth 



242 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

that I saw everywhere — a rosy, almost radiant youth 
that walked into death so blithe and unafraid ! 

"Ah," he said, with thrilling enthusiasm, "war 
to-day is a young man's game. It is a war of youth 
and it takes youth to win." 

I spoke of the many men who had risen from 
the ranks. It seemed to strike a responsive cord, 
for he said swiftly: 

"Yes, it is very true. Every man in this war 
has his chance. Efficiency counts above all other 
things. You cannot afford to have friends." 

In this connection it is no breach of confidence 
for me to repeat something that Sir Douglas Haig 
once said to a friend of mine who is a well-known 
English editor and who had made the usual com- 
ment on the extreme youth of the great bulk of the 
British Army. Haig's answer to him was: 

"Why wouldn't a soldier be young? Would you 
choose men of forty to plan a championship football 
game? War is more strenuous than the fiercest 
football game." 

I was with Sir Douglas Haig in those momentous 
days when America broke off diplomatic relations 
with Germany and when those of us temporarily 
exiled abroad realised that the time had at last come 
when we would actively take our place in the line- 
up of the Great Cause. It naturally led to the sub- 
ject of what war had done for the overseas people — 
and this meant those gallant sons of empire who 
had heeded the call of the mother lioness and had 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 243 

left bush and range and field to fight in far-off lands. 

The Commander-in-Chief's face kindled with 
pride as he said: "War, harsh as it is, is also the 
great maker of men. Take the Australian, for ex- 
' ample. Every one knows that he is as proud as he 
is undisciplined. Yet war has made him a trained 
and disciplined soldier, and more than that, a world 
citizen. The same is true of the Canadian, the South 
African, and the New Zealander; indeed all those 
intrepid men who have sacrificed so much for prin- 
ciple and for honour. They will go back to their 
homes better equipped and better organised for the 
task of peace." 

Rash prophecy is remote from the Haig scheme 
of life. Although inarticulate about himself, he has 
always favoured the frankest publicity about his 
army and the performance of his men. The brief 
and businesslike reports of operations that emanate 
each day from his headquarters (they are almost 
epigrammatic) are eminently characteristic of the 
man whose name they bear. 

Yet behind the unvarnished statement that "a 

trench was taken at " often lies an unwritten 

classic of courage — an unheralded epic of sacrifice. 

But underneath all this poverty of expression lies 
a mine of unexplored human material whose richest 
vein is the real personality of the man himself. 

War has raised him to eminence without disclos- 
ing those intimate facts which are so necessary to 
the study of an individual and his achievement. Be- 



244 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

cause of this lack of published information no less 
marked in Great Britain than in America, it seems 
worth while to dwell for a moment on the story of 
his life. It will help you to understand why he 
has travelled so far and how he has welded those 
hosts, gathered from the uttermost ends of the 
earth, into a coherent, elastic, ever-ready and de- 
pendable force that works with the precision of the 
most delicate mechanism. 

Most people know that Haig is a Fifer, but what 
most people do not know is the very illuminating 
fact that from his boyhood he aspired to be a 
soldier. This ambition took definite form at Ox- 
ford, where he was a student at Brasenose College. 
He was never the "hail-fellow-well-met" sort of 
person. Reserve was his hall-mark. But he was 
always an outdoor man; he invariably rode a big 
grey horse every afternoon, and he spent all his 
leisure time fox hunting. 

In those days to be an officer was more of a lux- 
ury than a real profession in England. The country 
had so adapted itself to the buying of commissions 
that when a man regarded the Army as a definite 
career he became marked. As a matter of fact, as 
Haig galloped through the streets of Oxford and 
across the lovely countryside that lies adjacent he 
was often pointed out. His colleagues would say: 
"There goes young Haig. He's going to be a 
soldier." 

Little did they dream that the fair-haired boy 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 245 

who sat so erect in his saddle would lead one of the 
greatest armies in the annals of military endeavour 
and that he would be the inspiration that makes 
soldiering a sacred calling. 

Then, as now, Sir Douglas gave the impression 
of a great store of latent energy — of reserved vital- 
ity. Few were ever deceived by his quietness into 
thinking that he was apathetic. 

His first military experience was in the cavalry, 
which he has always loved, and his initial promo- 
tion came from gallant service on the hot sands of 
Sudan. In the South African War he took first 
rank as a cavalry leader. He had so many narrow 
escapes from death that he came to be known as 
"Lucky Haig." 

As you analyse the Haig personality you find that 
he has an amazing insight — a real gift of construc- 
tive forecast. His appraisal of the German menace 
will illustrate. More than twenty years ago he went 
to Germany for a visit. As a result of that journey 
he wrote a long letter to Sir Evelyn Wood that, in 
the light of the bloody events of the present, is little 
short of uncanny. A friend who saw that letter has 
summed it up as "one of practical insight, mastery 
of detail, shrewd prophecy and earnest warning." 
The future Commander-in-Chief of the British 
Armies in France was convinced then of the inevi- 
tableness of a conflict with the Kaiser, and he felt 
strongly the urgent need of preparedness for that 
struggle which he knew would up-root all Europe. 



246 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

But his warnings, like those of his great col- 
league, Lord Roberts in England, and those of Gen- 
eral Leonard Wood of America, fell on deaf and 
unheeding ears. I cite this episode merely to show- 
that Haig, like many another prophet, was without 
honour in his own land, and also that he has the 
quality of vision which is the indispensable attribute 
of every leader of men. 

He had ample opportunity to impress his execu- 
tive ability as Chief of Staff in India, and he had 
just begun to execute some of his striking ideas of 
training as commander at Aldershort (England's 
great military camp) when the Great War broke. 
He was in at the beginning, and he has been on 
the firing line ever since. In the rack and agony 
of those first fighting months he saw the hideous 
harvest that unpreparedness reaps. 

Of those two heroic Army Corps — the famous 
"First Seven Divisions" — that Lord French took to 
the rescue in France in that historic August of 1914 
(the intrepid array, by the way, that the Kaiser 
called "the contemptible little English army") Haig 
commanded the first, which included much of the 
cavalry. 

From Mons to Ypres he was in the thick of bat- 
tle, never depressed, never elated, his courage and 
example acting like a talisman of strength on tired 
and war-worn troopers who fought valiantly against 
odds the like of which had hardly been recorded 
since Thermopylae. It was such a continuous tale 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 247 

of heroism, in which the humblest Tommy had his 
full share, that it is difficult to extract a single 
incident. 

Out of all that welter of work and fight let us 
take one story which, almost more than any other, 
reveals the grit and stamina that are Sir Douglas 
Haig's. It was at the battle of Ypres, when that 
immortal thin line of British khaki, bent but not 
broken, stemmed the mighty German avalanche and 
blocked the passage to the sea. Outnumbered more 
than ten to one in some places, it fought with that 
desperate and dogged tenacity which has always 
been the inheritance of the British soldier. Every 
impromptu trench was a Valhalla of English gal- 
lantry. Deeds that in other wars would have stood 
out conspicuously were here merged into an endless 
succession of deathless glory. 

Lord French, the Commander-in-Chief, had been 
down to the front line. "We can't hold out much 
longer," said a colonel. "It is impossible." 

"I only want men who can do the impossible," re- 
plied Lord French. "You must hold." And the line 
held. 

To the right of Ypres things were going badly. 
The deluge of German shell was well-nigh unbear- 
able. Even the most heroic courage could not pre- 
vail against such an uneven balance of strength. 
The cry was for men, and yet every man was en- 
gaged. 

It was on that memorable day — forever unique in 



248 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

the history of British arms — that cooks, servants 
and orderlies went up into the firing line, and the 
man who exchanged the frying-pan for the rifle 
achieved a record of bravery as imperishable as his 
comrade long trained to fight. Still the lines shook 
under that mighty Teutonic assault. It seemed more 
than human endurance could possibly stand. 

Meanwhile Sir Douglas Haig had been ordered 
into the shambles with the First Corps. They 
manned the bloody breach and won for all time to 
come the title of the Iron Brigade, even as Haig 
himself in other and equally strenuous days had 
gained the sobriquet of "Ironside." The old metal 
rang true. 

Now came the event which bound the silent Fifer 
to his men with bands of steel. For twenty-four 
hours the furies of battle had raged. The German 
bombardment was now a hideous storm of dripping 
death. The Prussian Guard rose like magic legions 
out of the ground. They had just broken through 
one British line and small parties of khakied troops 
were in retreat. 

Suddenly down the Menin road, with Ypres sil- 
houetted behind like a mystic city shrouded with 
smoke, rode Sir Douglas Haig — trim, well-groomed, 
serene, sitting his horse erect and unafraid, and with 
an escort of his own Seventeenth Lancers as per- 
fectly turned out as on peaceful parade. Overhead 
was the incessant shriek of shells, and all around 
carnage reigned. A thrill of spontaneous admira- 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 249 

tion swept those tired and battered troops, for the 
spectacle they beheld was as unlike war as night is 
unlike day. 

The effect of that calm and confident presence act- 
ed like a cooling draught on a parched tongue. It 
galvanised the waning strength of the gory trenches ; 
the retreat became an advance and the broken line 
was restored. Haig had turned the tide. 

I have seen that Menin road down which Haig 
rode with that unuttered message of faith. Two 
years had passed, but it was still the highway of 
death, for shrapnel rained all around. It was ac- 
cessible to the civilian only if he was willing to take 
his own risk. How much more deadly was it on 
that day when the blue-eyed man who now rules the 
British armies in France gave that amazing evi- 
dence of his disregard of danger! I thought of it 
then, and again on that winter day when I sat talk- 
ing with him amid the comparative ease and com- 
fort of General Headquarters. I spoke of it as one 
of the superb acts of the war. 

The Field Marshal merely shrugged his shoulders 
and said: "It was nothing." 

A few days after the event that I have just de- 
scribed Haig had one of his close calls from death. 
A German shell burst in the midst of his headquar- 
ters, and nearly every one of his staff officers was 
killed or maimed. The Field Marshal was out on 
a tour of inspection at the line. "Lucky Haig" again. 

When Haig became Commander-in-Chief of the 



250 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

British Armies in France it seemed the logical goal 
of a long, stalwart preparation — the inevitable 
thing. For deep down under the Haig character, 
and, incidentally, behind his distinguished achieve- 
ment, are two shining qualities — patience and per- 
severance. He has never hesitated to do what we 
in America call "spade work." It is sometimes 
prosaic, but it is usually effective. 

Contradictory as it may seem when you consider 
his Scotch ancestry, there must somewhere be a 
touch of the Oriental in Sir Douglas Haig. I mean, 
of course, that phase of his character which finds 
expression in persistent and methodical prepared- 
ness. His whole career is literally a dramatisation 
of an ancient Moslem proverb which reads, 
"Patience is the key to Paradise." 

Take the first Somme offensive. Nothing could 
express the Haig idea better. For months everybody 
knew that the "Big Push" was booked. There were 
many times during the lull that preceded the ad- 
vance when men less cautious would have loosed the 
dogs of war that tugged so hard at the leash. But 
the Field Marshal, with that super-patience, waited 
until the last and most minute detail was ready. 
Then he shot his bolt and it went home. It was a 
triumph of the readiness which is the basic princi- 
ple of the Haig creed. 

What is known as the "Haig nibble" is another 
conspicuous example of his technique. In this war 
the open engagement is the rare exception. After 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 251 

the first few months it developed into a trial by 
trench — a wearing-down process. "Attrition" is 
what the experts call it. Nothing could suit the 
Field Marshal's temperament better. A method of 
campaign that would discourage most commanders 
and lead them to indiscretion has made it possible 
for him to push steadily and stolidly on. 

This, then, is the type of man who sits at the 
flat-topped desk at General Headquarters with his 
finger on that battle pulse, responsive to its re- 
motest quiver. The marvel of motor, telegraph and 
telephone enables him to be in constant touch with 
every unit of his command. Follow him through 
his day's work and you see how the war game is 
played — a war that, having tested the resource and 
the resiliency of all Europe, has now extended its 
dread domain beyond the reaches of the Atlantic 
to the shores of America. It is the Titanic task! 

And when this moving picture, more animated 
than any imaginative play ever thrown upon cinema 
screen, has passed before you, you realise, even be- 
fore a single shot is fired, that dynamic energy and 
organisation of the highest order have been tested 
to a well-nigh incredible extent. 

Since the Commander-in-Chief himself is the in- 
carnation of systematic labour, it follows that the 
daily procedure of that modest establishment which 
he rules "somewhere in France" is efficient and 
effective. Taking its cue from the top, it lets noth- 
ing disturb the tenor of its way. Triumph or dis- 



252 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

aster are treated just the same. The unflinching 
discipline which binds the head of the armies to his 
closest colleagues has made possible a consistent 
and unwavering progress of the war. 

Every morning at nine o'clock Sir Douglas Haig 
is at his desk, and from that time until the lunch- 
gong sounds he is in conference with the heads of 
those various branches of the service whose efforts 
comprise the total of war operations. Upon his 
desk are heaped the reports of everything that hap- 
pened the night before. A raid on forty yards of 
trench many miles away may reveal information 
of utmost importance to the whole army. Thus the 
office becomes a clearing house of information, and 
out of it emerges the news, grave or cheering, that 
is flashed to a waiting world, and likewise those 
more significant commands whose execution makes 
history. 

The process of assembling and assimilating all 
the news of that extended front is reduced to a very 
simple science. This is because each army unit has 
its own headquarters — a replica in every detail of 
the general establishment. The difference between 
these lesser headquarters and the chief's is that at 
the former must be handled, in addition to actual 
fighting and flying, the terrific task of providing 
food and ammunition, ambulance and hospital re- 
lief, remounts and renewal of rank and personnel. 

The mystery of close and continuous contact be- 
tween the Allied armies is easily explained. It is 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 253 

accomplished by means of what is known as a 
liaison officer, or group of officers. They are pre- 
cisely what this French word means — a connection. 
There is a French mission or Liaison with all Brit- 
ish commands, and vice versa. Through this me- 
dium all communication is made, and all news of 
operations transmitted. It is swift, simple and 
direct. 

So, too, with that monster agency of devastation 
— the modern battle. Go behind the scenes and you 
find that, like every other detail of the war, it is 
merely a matter of systematic, calculating detail. It 
is like a super-selling campaign conducted by the 
best organised business concern in the world. 

In former days, when wars were decided by a 
single heroic engagement, armies stood on their arms 
for hours before battle while the commander rode 
up and down the lines giving the men cheer and 
encouragement. To-day the commander who tried 
that trick would last about two consecutive seconds, 
because the long arm of artillery which has annihi- 
lated distance would also wipe him out. 

Instead, the Commander-in-Chief remains many 
miles behind the front, bound to it by every means 
that instant communication devises. He has before 
him photographs of every inch of enemy ground, 
taken by aviators. The wonderful thing about this 
battle planning is that by means of these aerial pic- 
tures it is possible to keep the panorama of battle- 
ground up to the very minute. In winter, for ex-* 



254 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

ample, a fall of snow will greatly alter the whole 
situation. But the aerial photographer gets around 
this by making a series of pictures that shows the 
enemy trench, before, during and after the snow- 
fall. " 

The plan of a great campaign like the Somme is 
built out of months of preparation and conference. 
The Commander-in-Chief decides on the general 
scheme, while the specific tasks are assigned for 
execution to the various army commanders. In 
other words, every chief and the men under him 
have a particular job to do and it is up to them to 
do it. The total of these jobs, some of them re- 
quiring months of solid effort, comprise the offen- 
sive. War nowadays is a series of so-called of- 
fensives enlisting millions of men and ranging over 
hundreds of miles of front. It is devoid of thrill; 
you never see a flag ; it is literally the hardest kind 
of plain, every-day toil. 

As you watch the organisation of the British 
armies in France unfold you become more and more 
impressed with their kinship with Big Business as 
we know it in America. Like Andrew Carnegie, 
Sir Douglas Haig leans on experts. He assumes 
that a man who has devoted a large part of his life 
to a specific task knows all about it, and is to be 
trusted. He has gathered about him, therefore, a 
group of keen, alert and live-minded advisers. Some 
of them served their apprenticeship in other wars; 
others have been swiftly seasoned in the present 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 255 

struggle. They represent the very flower of ser- 
vice and experience. It is a remarkable company — 
these men who move so noiselessly, who work so 
loyally, who keep incessant vigil with war. 

There is still another link with business. In many 
large commercial establishments in the United 
States you find a so-called Suggestion Box. Into 
it the humblest employe may drop a suggestion for 
the improvement of the business. It ranges from a 
plan for a more methodical arrangement of office 
stationery to a whole new system of time and labour 
saving machinery. In many cases prizes are offered 
for the best suggestions made during the year. 

There is no such box at General Headquarters, 
but its informal substitute is the meal-table, where 
both civilian and soldier have free play, not only to 
inquire about the branch of service in which they 
are most interested, but to make any suggestions 
that may be born of observation. No recommenda- 
tion is too modest or too far-fetched to have the 
serious and courteous consideration of the kindly 
man who sits at the head of the table. 

Nor is all the talk of shop. War is subordinated 
to the less ravaging things that are happening out 
in the busy world, where there is no rumble of 
guns, no clash of armed men, and where life is not 
one bombardment after another. And sometimes, 
too, there is talk of those haunts and homes across 
the sea where brave hearts yearn and where the 
agony of war suspense is no less searching than at 



256 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

the fighting front. They also serve who wait alone, 

into every detail of daily life at General Head- 
quarters the Field Marshal's character is impressed. 
After lunch, for example, he spends an hour alone, 
and in this period of meditation the whole fateful 
panorama of the war passes before him. When it 
is over the wires splutter and the fierce life of the 
coming night — the Army does not begin to fight 
until most people go to sleep — is ordained. 

This finished, the brief period of respite begins. 
Rain or shine, his favourite horse is brought up to 
the door and he goes for a ride, usually accom- 
panied by one or two young staff officers. I have 
seen Sir Douglas Haig galloping along those French 
roads, head up, eyes ahead — a memorable figure of 
grace and motion. He rides like those latter-day 
centaurs — the Australian ranger and the American 
cowboy. He seems part of his horse. 

Home from the ride, there are more conferences. 
Then dinner with its lighter but always instructive 
talk and its relief from the strain of work. 

You have seen the picture of the average week- 
day at the nerve centre of the British Army in 
France. Now drop in on Sunday. The telephone 
still jingles, the typewriters click, there is the same 
movement of orderlies to and fro, the usual suc- 
cession of conferences. But there is one other per- 
formance worthy of the day and eminently typical 
of the keen-eyed Scotchman who is the repository 
of so much British hope and fear. 



A VISIT TO SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 257 

At 10 o'clock in the morning the long grey motor 
with its tiny British flag is at the door — (it is the 
only car at the front carrying this insignia) — the 
Commander-in-Chief steps inside and is whirled off 
to the little Presbyterian church, where he sits with 
his brother officers and men and hears good old- 
fashioned Scotch orthodoxy preached by a "padre" 
as they call the army chaplain. The weather is 
never too bad or the pressure of those multitudinous 
reports for Sir Douglas Haig to miss a Sunday ser- 
vice. This devotion to the creed of his fathers is 
just one other evidence of the character of the fair- 
haired, blue-eyed soldier who is Pershing's chief 
brother-in-arms. 

That modest establishment somewhere in France 
is early to bed but more than one guest at General 
Headquarters on the way to his chamber has passed 
the office of the Commander-in-Chief and seen him 
— a silent, aloof, almost lonely figure — leaning over 
a map and beginning the nightly wrestle with the 
great problem that, reaching out from the friendly 
house amid the trees, affects the destiny and safety 
of the whole world. 

In that closing picture is the revelation of Haig 
the Man and Soldier. His personality is the con- 
centrated sum of patient, persistent and untiring 
effort. Lacking the brilliancy of spectacular na- 
tures it combines those elements of stamina and per- 
severance that rear, in the end, the impregnable bul- 
wark of confidence and success. 



XI — England's War Efficiency Engineer 

WHEN you strip away the glamour from 
the Great War and analyse the larger re- 
sults you find that nothing achieved so 
far is of more permanent value to the future than 
the infusion of business methods into the conduct 
of Governments. Just as the war itself is organised 
and operated upon a huge commercial basis so have 
the Cabinets become Clearing Houses for the best 
business brains. The hands that have moulded in- 
dustry now shape the destinies of nations. Sales- 
manship has succeeded Statesmanship. 

Never before in all history has there been such a 
shaking up of dry administrative bones. The pro- 
fessional European politician, born to office, is in 
the main a vanishing type; his "pull" is a lost art. 
There is a definite reason. The billions consumed 
on the fiery altar of the stupendous conflict demand 
employment by men trained to the fiscal task, while 
the gearing of railways and industries to the titanic 
needs requires a specialised preparation for the co- 
lossal readjustments of peace. 

In no Allied country have business talents been 
so completely commandeered as in England. With 
the exception of Premier Lloyd George, Mr. Bal- 
four and a few other seasoned office-holders, the 
Cabinet is a Board of Directors recruited from in- 

258 




Copyright Photograph by J. Russell & Sons. 



SIR ERIC GEDDES 
England's War Efficiency Engineer 



ENGLAND'S WAR ENGINEER 259 

dustrial pursuits that could sit on any problem of 
overhead cost and distribution that came up. In 
addition, practically every important war activity 
is either dominated or controlled by men who left 
their desks and counting rooms to become Drive- 
wheels of the Mighty Machine of War. 

If this Commercialisation of Government, as it 
might be called, had begun in the United States no 
one would have been surprised. Business is instinct 
with us. The fact that it was born amid the hide- 
bound traditions of British Statesmanship makes it 
one of the many miracles of a war of miracles. 
Nor does any single fact more eloquently proclaim 
Britain's determination to be a tremendous indus- 
trial factor when the war is over. 

The evolution was interesting. When England 
went into war almost over-night she had a Govern- 
ment composed of professional statesmen. Save 
only Bonar Law, a retired steel master, who was 
Colonial Secretary, a post, by the way, which did 
not call for a vast amount of commercial training, 
there was not a single man of practical business 
experience in the Cabinet. Not until Viscount — 
then Lord — Northcliffe exploded his famous bomb- 
shell about the lack of high explosives which jolted 
Kitchener from his pedestal and led to the establish- 
ment of the Ministry of Munitions did the Govern- 
ment draw the recruits from commerce about its 
standard. 

The Ministry of Munitions therefore represents 



26o THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

the corner-stone of the Business Bulwark that the 
Empire has reared. Lloyd George was the first Min- 
ister of Munitions. He was not a business man, 
but he knew how business affairs should be con- 
ducted. He knew, too, that America had built her 
industrial supremacy on close-knit and scientific or- 
ganisation. He did what Andrew Carnegie or any 
other man of that type would do. He mobilised 
the Schwabs, the Edisons, the Henry Fords, and 
the Westinghouses of the Kingdom and made them 
his fellow-workers. 

From every corner of the Empire he drafted 
experience. He wanted workers without stint so he 
started a Bureau of Labour ; he needed publicity so 
he launched an Advertising Department ; to compete 
successfully with the Germans he knew that he 
would have to employ every inventive resource that 
his country could command, so he founded an In- 
vention and Research Bureau; he saw that the 
shirker and the slacker were still abroad in the 
land so he unfurled the Union Jack in every mill 
and took over the control of British Industry; finally 
with his Munitions Act he conscripted the workers 
at forge and furnace into an industrial army that 
was practically under martial law. He slashed red 
tape and he injected red blood into the Arteries of 
Government. 

Such was the real beginning of the business con- 
duct of the war so far as the British end was con- 
cerned. The startling results produced by the Min- 



ENGLAND'S WAR ENGINEER 261 

istry of Munitions convinced Lloyd George that the 
business man was one of the nation's chief assets — 
an asset which should be capitalised to the very last 
degree. When he suggested to Mr. Asquith and to 
his other colleagues in the Government the necessity 
for what amounted to a commercialisation of war 
procedure he was met with the argument that "too 
many business men would spoil the Government. " 

The little Welshman bided his time. When he 
became Premier in December, 191 6, he startled 
England with a Cabinet that represented the real 
business leadership of the Kingdom. Since that 
time the nation has taken steady toll of its com- 
mercial genius until to-day the control of national 
affairs and more especially the domination of the 
three great Agencies of War, Food and Finance are 
almost entirely in the hands of men who had spent 
their previous lives doing nothing more stirring or 
patriotic than rolling up great fortunes in railroads, 
shipping, banking or manufacture of some kind. 

Premier in this Government by Business is Sir 
Eric Geddes, who is the Lloyd George of the New 
Era. He is England's War Efficiency Engineer. 
"Let Geddes Do It" is the slogan of imperial dis- 
tress. 

In less than two years and at the age of forty- 
two, Geddes has become a Prop of Government. 
There are many people of England to-day who be- 
lieve that he has more than a fifty-fifty chance to be 
Prime Minister. If this happens — and nothing 



262 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

seems impossible in this war — it would represent 
the very last word in Commercialised National Con- 
trol. 

What is the explanation of Geddes ? The answer 
lies in the fact that first, last and always he is a 
business man. He has regarded every one of the 
many difficult problems put up to him since the be- 
ginning of the war merely as a business proposition, 
applied his training and experience, and made good. 
This is the formula of what is commonly regarded 
as the most spectacular personal success of the war. 

When I first met Geddes he sat at an obscure desk 
in a small office in the Armament Building. It was 
in 19 1 5 and the Ministry of Munitions was in the 
making. Although he was the highest-paid railway 
official in England he was practically unknown out 
of his own field. When I last talked with him he 
was First Lord of the Admiralty, the post vacated 
by Churchill and Carson in succession, and all 
Britain hailed him as glorified Life-Preserver. He 
had galvanised the whole British munition output; 
he had put the British Military Railways in France 
on the map; he had reorganised the Admiralty on 
a business basis and was facing the toughest of all 
his tasks — the suppression of the submarine pest. 

In Geddes the Lloyd George history repeats itself. 
For the first two years of the war the present Prime 
Minister was shunted into every national emergency 
whether it was a coal strike in Wales, a snarl among 
the Allies or the unravelling of some Governmental 



ENGLAND'S WAR ENGINEER 263 

tangle. He went from post to post until he reached 
the top. Geddes is now the Super-Minute Man, 
ready to jump into the breach at the first sound of 
the fire alarm. In the American vernacular he is 
always there "with the goods." You have only to 
take a survey of his life — it is as swift and stirring 
as a movie-film — to understand why he has been 
able to register every time. The approach to his 
star part in Business-Managing the Empire is an 
animated sermon on how to succeed. 

Geddes was born in India of Scotch parents, who 
returned to the Mother Country when he was very 
young. Being Scotch, he is thrifty with everything 
but his own energy. He practically ran away from 
home when he was seventeen. His father, con- 
vinced that he would come back, gave him a check 
for $75 to be used for his return passage. When he 
got to New York (he went in the steerage of an 
Allan liner) he mailed back the check saying in one 
of his characteristically brief letters: "I think it 
will do me good to go on my own." 

Unlike most of the heroes of human interest 
romances he had more than the traditional fifty 
cents in his pocket. To be exact his fortune was 
ten dollars. His first job was as typewriter sales- 
man in New York. Then he drifted to Pittsburg, 
worked at the Homestead Steel Works for a dollar 
and a half a day and finally landed as section hand 
on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in West Vir- 
ginia. The engineer in charge of the gang was 



264 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

L. F. Loree, who later became president of the road. 

For a time the section worked near a small sta- 
tion called Nicolette. The converted freight car 
used as a lodging house by the labourers and which 
Geddes now calls his first Pullman, stood on a sid- 
ing nearby. In his odd moments Geddes began to 
study train despatching and telegraphy. His teacher 
was the station agent, a kindly Irish woman, whose 
sweetheart was the section foreman. In exchange 
for instruction he "passed" the trains for her, that 
is officially signalled them by, while the agent was 
out with her young man. When she finally mar- 
ried him Geddes got her position as station agent. 
Thus the future First Lord of the British Admiralty 
and a possible Prime Minister of Great Britain 
flashed signals and even switched cars for Balti- 
more and Ohio trains at an obscure point in West 
Virginia. 

Geddes was big, brawny and restless. He wanted 
to see America so he went to Alabama, worked as 
a timber "jack" and learned the lumber business at 
first hand. When he was twenty-one he sailed off 
to Australia, rode the range as a sheep herder and 
turned up a year later in India, where he took root 
for the time. His knowledge of railroading gained 
in America enabled him to become foreman of a 
gang of coolies building a light railway through the 
jungles. The moment he touched light railway con- 
struction he reached the work that was to qualify 
him in later years as a master war wager. In five 



ENGLAND'S WAR ENGINEER 265 

years he was Traffic Manager of Rohilkund and 
Kumaon Railway. After this life for Geddes was 
just one continuous promotion. He seemed to 
find the magic key and all doors opened to him. 

Some of the .Indian stockholders in his railway 
were also stockholders in the North-Eastern Rail- 
way in England. They began to write home about 
the construction wizard who had dropped into their 
midst. The English stockholders soon got the im- 
pression that he was too valuable a man to be wasted 
on Oriental jungles. At Simla one Wednesday 
Geddes got an offer by cable to come to the North- 
Eastern. On the following Saturday he was on his 
way. This is the Geddes system of doing things. 

The North-Eastern is one of the richest roads in 
England. It skirts the humming Midlands and taps 
an immense coal and iron area. Geddes' first job 
was as Chief Goods Manager, which corresponds 
with a General Freight Agent on an American road. 
Geddes at once had the inspiration that would come 
to any wide-awake American traffic official. He 
decided to promote industry along his line. No one 
had ever thought of this in England before. In the 
face of considerable opposition from the Board of 
Directors he established the office of Industrial 
Manager. The result was increased revenue and 
growing goodwill. 

Now came one of those curious freaks of fate 
that bob up so often in the lives of men of action. 
Geddes got an offer to operate an Argentine rail- 



266 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 



way at a salary that seemed fabulous. He took 
it up with the North-Eastern people and while they 
could not meet the South American proposition they 
agreed to pay him what was then, and what re- 
mains, the highest salary ever paid a railway official 
in Great Britain. If Geddes had accepted that Ar- 
gentine offer the chances are that to-day he would 
be the king-pin among South American railway 
operators instead of being a leading figure in the 
drama of the Great War. 

When the war broke out Geddes was Deputy Gen- 
eral Manager of the North-Eastern. The General 
Manager was practically a figure-head so Geddes 
was really head of the system. He wanted to do his 
war bit so he went to the War Office in September, 
1 9 14, and said: 

"You haven't any trained railway troops in 
France and I think you will need them." 

"No thank you," said the War Office, "we can 
manage very well." 

That was before business sense had dawned on 
the War Office. It was the first of a long series of 
blunders with men and materials that cost the Em- 
pire dearly. 

Eric Geddes is not easily discouraged. He re- 
turned to York, which is the centre of the North- 
Eastern system, and raised a railway battalion out 
of his employes. He became their Lieutenant Col- 
onel and the unit became part of the Pioneer and 
Sapper Division of the Royal Engineers. It was 



ENGLAND'S WAR ENGINEER 267 

Geddes who helped to lay out a large part of the 
trench system which comprises part of the coast 
defence in the North of England. 

It was impossible for Geddes to keep out of the 
war game. Destiny was working in his direction 
and it manifested itself in the shape of a message 
from Kitchener, who asked him to come to the War 
Office. These two big and outstanding personalities 
had known each other in India. The first thing that 
K. of K. saicl was this : 

"I am not happy about the railway situation in 
France. There is too much congestion of supplies 
and material. Can you go over and straighten 
things out?" 

"Of course," replied Geddes. "I can start to- 
morrow." 

But Geddes did not start to-morrow. The Red 
Tape Octopus squeezed out Kitchener's scheme, and 
Geddes had to go back to his railway battalion. For 
the second time England turned down the man on 
whom she now leans so heavily. 

Geddes besought his Board of Directors to get 
him into the war. "If you tender my services per- 
haps they will be accepted," he said. 

The Chairman went to the Government, saying: 
"We know we have a big man in Geddes and he is 
wasting his time training men." But the Govern- 
ment still remained deaf. The old hostility of the 
dyed-in-the-wool regular for the civilian stood pat. 

Once more Kitchener sent for Geddes. This time 



268 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

the War Lord was in the North and Geddes joined 
him on his private car at Newcastle. 

"I am uneasy about munitions/' said Kitchener. 
"Can you come in and help us?" 

Geddes had become accustomed to offering his 
services to the Government so he made the usual 
assent, to which the Secretary of State for War re- 
sponded : 

"If no Munitions Department is established I 
want you to come with me to the War Office." 

While Kitchener was arranging to fit Geddes into 
his scheme of things the Northcliffe exposure about 
shell shortage broke like a storm over England. 
When it subsided Lloyd George sat at a desk in an 
office down in Whitehall as Minister of Munitions. 
With a stroke of the pen the British Government 
had created a whole new Ministry that was in many 
respects the very Hope of Empire. But this De- 
partment existed on paper. Lloyd George had to 
translate it into a going concern and do it in a hurry. 
He had never heard of Geddes, but his name was 
handed to him in a list of men eligible for work 
with him. 

Three days later Geddes and Lloyd George met 
for the first time. It was an historic meeting be- 
cause from that hour on the war was to give each 
one a tremendous opportunity which was to be capi- 
talised to the very last degree. 

"What can you do?" asked Lloyd George in his 
brief and abrupt fashion. 



ENGLAND'S WAR ENGINEER 269 

"I have no technical knowledge of shell making, 
but I can get things done," replied Geddes. 

"All right," rejoined the little Minister, "y°u 
will have every chance." 

In May, 19 15, Geddes was made Deputy Director 
General of Munitions, and took over the production 
of rifles, small arms, optical instruments, transport 
vehicles, machine guns and salvage. It was Geddes 
who first began to retrieve empty shell cases and 
through a system of careful transportation made it 
possible for the government to use brass cartridge 
cases at least a dozen times. He was one of the 
Fathers of Salvage. 

In six weeks he had his whole machine going at 
full tilt. England suddenly found herself bang up 
against a serious munitions problem. Millions of 
empty shell cases were coming in from America. 
These cases had to be filled ; otherwise they were so 
much inert and ineffective metal. All the while the 
cry across the waters from France was "Munitions 
and Still More Munitions." British guns stood im- 
potent before the German avalanche of steel. 

Geddes saw that no munitions task was quite so 
important as getting these millions of shell cases 
filled. So he annexed the job. It meant more 
work for him, but one of his chief traits is that he 
is a glutton for work. 

Factories had to be built or adapted and an army 
of workers recruited and trained. To give you 
some idea of the technical difficulties of shell filling 



270 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

let me say that there are exactly sixty-four items — 
that is sixty-four component parts — in filling a sin- 
gle eighteen-pounder shell. Men and women had 
to be taught the care and use of deadly explosives. 
It meant the establishment of a whole new school 
of labour. 

Geddes turned on the full current of his dynamic 
energy. He assumed control of the Royal Ordnance 
Factories at Woolwich, Waltham and Enfield. Be- 
fore the leaves on the French hillsides turned red 
and brown that fateful autumn British batteries 
were hurling back shell for shell in every bombard- 
ment that the German artillery made. The whole 
British offensive of September 191 5 was due al- 
most entirely to the fact that Geddes had stimulated 
the output of the shell filling factories and had put 
live and up-to-date American business co-ordination 
behind the men and the machines. 

The astonishing parallel in the advancement of 
Lloyd George and Geddes now became marked. 
When Kitchener went to his death on the "Hamp- 
shire" and Lloyd George succeeded him as Secre- 
tary of State for War the first question he asked 
when he took his new desk was : 

"Is Geddes free?" 

Geddes was. It is characteristic of the man that 
he never permits a job to master him. He does the 
conquering. Part of his administrative creed is to 
organise his work so thoroughly that it can run 
without him. This is the reason why he has always 



ENGLAND'S WAR ENGINEER 271 

been able to act as First Aid when the Hurry-up 
Call came. Lloyd George therefore found him ready 
for a new demonstration of his many-sided talents. 

Like his lamented predecessor, Lloyd George was 
worried about the railway situation in France. He 
was getting the shells across the channel but the 
shells were not getting up to the men fast enough. 
The battle of the Somme had proved that England 
had all the ammunition she needed, but as the armies 
went forward the railways behind did not keep pace. 

"Are you sure that the French railways can carry 
all the traffic ?" asked Lloyd George. 

"No, I am not," replied Geddes. 

"Then make an investigation and report to me," 
was the injunction from the War Secretary. 

Geddes went to France in mufti and made one of 
his swift and searching appraisals of the transporta- 
tion system. Here he was on his chosen ground. 
He saw ammunition being man-handled; to use his 
phrase, "the stuff was bogged." Being a railway 
man he realised that the best and quickest way to 
get shells up to the fighting men was on light rail- 
ways, which could be laid down or repaired over 
night. He went back to Lloyd George and summed 
up his recommendation in a single sentence which 
was: 

"We must have light railways that can follow 
the guns as they smash the way up the line." 

On the spot Lloyd George made him Director of 
Military Railways at the War Office. The very 



272 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

next day Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, whom 
he had met during his investigation, offered him the 
post of Director General of Transportation in 
France. He wired back: 

"I have just accepted post of Director of Mili- 
tary Railways at the War Office." 

Haig immediately telegraphed : 

"Take both posts." 

Geddes accepted both positions and now began a 
remarkable career as a dual personality that is 
without precedent in all war history. As Director 
General of Transportation in France he had to 
requisition himself as Director of Military Rail- 
ways at the War Office for all the materials used 
in the field. For once the Consumer could find no 
fault with the Producer. They were one and the 
same person. 

Geddes began the work, which dramatised all his 
previous experience and put him in the War Hall 
of Fame. He found the railways in France con- 
gested; the rolling stock broken down under the 
terrific drive for food, troops and ammunition; the 
rails and road-bed showing the effect of the inces- 
sant wear and tear. He faced a colossal and mo- 
mentous job of reconstruction because the railways 
meant life or death and traffic could not be inter- 
rupted for a single hour. It was like rebuilding a 
Terminal like the Grand Central Station in New 
York City without interfering with the operation 
of a train. Geddes turned the trick. 



ENGLAND'S WAR ENGINEER 273 

He got his whole task down on paper first. He 
built a pyramid with himself as Director General of 
Transportation at the apex and divided it into four 
main Divisions. One was Organisation of Forces; 
the second was Technical and dealt with Equip- 
ment, Extensions and all allied activities ; the third 
was purely Statistical, while the fourth had to do 
with Construction. He called this his Organisation 
and Liaison Chart because every one of these 
branches was literally married to the other. It was 
this close and constant team-work that won out. 

In working out his organisation Geddes did a 
very characteristic thing. He said to the Army 
Council in substance: "If I am to be Director Gen- 
eral of Transportation I must be master of all the 
highways." He therefore took over the control of 
the net-work of inland waterways which included 
all the canals of Northern France. Hundreds of 
thousands of tons of freight and thousands of 
wounded men move up and down their winding 
way each month. 

Geddes had to use the French roads to haul his 
supplies. They were in bad shape from the inter- 
minable movement of men, food, munitions and 
supplies so he became their custodian. Thus to his 
growing activities he now added road-making. He 
reorganised the French quarries and moved the 
broken stone direct from hillside to steam roller. 
He kept the roads in repair with battalions of nav- 
vies that he brought over from England. 



274 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Not content with all this he reached out and an- 
nexed the domain of Docks and Dock Engineer- 
ing. This work was formerly under the wing of 
the Army Service Corps. Geddes established a De- 
partment responsible for the repair and up-keep of 
all the Docks. This was a very essential work be- 
cause delays in the coming and going of supply 
ships would interfere with the Lines of Food Com- 
munication in the field. 

Being a disciple of centralisation Geddes farmed 
out the responsibility for the huge job that he had 
cut out for himself. At the head of each Depart- 
ment he placed a Director, who became the Geddes 
of that particular Branch whether it was Roads, 
Docks, Transportation, Light Railways or Inland 
Water Transport. 

Before long Geddes was a Dictator with an Em- 
pire all his own. He had to have a suitable capital 
so he planted his flag just outside the little town 
which will always be famous as the General Head- 
quarters of the British Armies in France. Here he 
built a remarkable group of offices. Technically 
they are called Transportation Headquarters, but 
in the popular history of the war they will always 
be known as Geddesburg. 

These offices are really a community group. The 
central structure is so arranged that the moment 
you enter you can look down a long hall and see a 
succession of signs that not only indicate every 
man's office but his job. These offices are arranged 



ENGLAND'S WAR ENGINEER 275 

in order of seniority. The first therefore is that 
of the Director General of Transportation. Next 
comes the Deputy Director General of Transporta- 
tion and so on. One value of this arrangement 
is that a man can see at a glance just the office he 
is seeking because the function of that office is re- 
vealed at the same time. It saves time and temper. 

At the outset of his experience in France he was 
wise enough to call to his aid a group of trained 
regular soldiers who knew military requirements 
and who were familiar with conditions in the field. 
He once explained his reason by saying: "The 
trained soldier can do the soldier's job better than 
any one else. For an expert job you must get ex- 
perts and let them alone." I might add, in passing, 
that this is the simple little rule upon which North- 
cliffe has reared the structure of his whole success 
with newspapers and magazines. 

Since his job was reconstruction Geddes' first and 
foremost difficulty lay with raw materials. How to 
get them was the problem because the head of every 
other Army and Navy activity was moving heaven 
and earth in a mad effort to obtain wood and steel. 
He had decided that light railways would save the 
whole Supply and Ammunition situation. In order 
to feed them he knew that the broad-gauge lines 
would have to be increased on a large scale. He 
further realised that to get new equipment for both 
light and standard gauge systems was out of the 
question in the brief time at his command. He de- 



276 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

termined to follow the line of least resistance. His 
campaign therefore resolved itself into getting new 
light railway material from mill and factory and 
drafting part of the existing standard gauge equip- 
ment from the going British railroads. 

The first of these propositions was a simple mat- 
ter of making contracts and following them 
through. The second bristled with troubles. All 
the railways in the United Kingdom were under 
military control, to be sure, but to commandeer roll- 
ing stock and tracks was little short of confiscation 
even under drastic war regulations. 

Geddes decided to use diplomacy. He knew he 
had to "sell" the British railway managers on the 
proposition of giving up part of their equipment 
so he invited them to come to France and see the 
army in action and go over the whole railway sys- 
tem. Practically none of these men had been in the 
zones of the armies. They came, they saw, and 
they were conquered by Geddes. They went back 
home convinced that the Director General of Trans- 
portation ought to have everything he asked for. 
When he demanded hundreds of locomotives and 
thousands of freight cars and hundreds of miles 
of actual track he got them. 

It meant literally taking up a whole railway sys- 
tem in England and laying it down in France. This 
is why you see, as you travel along the French Lines 
of Communication to-day North-Eastern locomo- 
tives hauling London and South Western trucks on 



ENGLAND'S WAR ENGINEER 277 

tracks that formerly gridironed the Midland Sys- 
tem. It helps to make the Tommy feel at home. 

By getting a ready-made standard gauge railway 
system Geddes was able to go straight ahead with 
the light railway construction. Once more he did 
a characteristic thing. "If we are to build rail- 
roads they must be built by seasoned railroad men," 
he said. He knew that the railways in Canada had 
blazed their iron way through virgin land and that 
as a result the Canadian Pacific, the Canadian 
Northern and the Grand Trunk had marshalled an 
army of builders who had fought flood, gorge and 
canyon. He recruited this host of construction 
pioneers for France and organised them into the 
so-called Canadian Railway Battalions. At their 
head he placed a game and grizzled railway contrac- 
tor, "Jack" Stewart, gave him a major general's 
commission and before many months had passed 
these men had laid down hundreds of miles of light 
railways. I have seen them within forty yards of 
the front line trenches. 

All the while Geddes was doing precisely what 
James J. Hill would have done under the same con- 
ditions. He dug out the vital statistics of all the 
lines he operated. He got such startling facts as 
demurrage under fire, the traffic density per mile in 
the fighting area, the time consumed for unloading 
at rail head, the number of empty cars that came 
back to the Advanced Supply Depot — indeed, every 
scrap of information that could illumine or facili- 



278 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

tate operations. Armed with these statistics he es- 
tablished a definite schedule. Every car had to be 
unloaded within a prescribed time no matter if it 
was under shell fire or not ; every train had to bring 
back its quota of material for salvage, wounded 
men or troops bound for the Rest Camps. "No 
empty hauls" was the slogan that went forth from 
Geddesburg. These were the rules for the standard 
gauge line. 

Geddes was no less exacting with the light rail- 
ways. They were kept to an iron-bound regulation. 
More than this he drove them forward with an un- 
ceasing labour that did not flinch or pause in the 
face of shot and shell. 

What was the result ? When the Germans made 
their famous "victorious retreat" in the Somme in 
the spring of 19 17 the railway followed right be- 
hind them. The rear guard of Haig's pursuing 
army could hear the shriek of the advancing loco- 
motives as they steamed along the freshly laid track. 
The Iron Horse almost trod on Tommy's heels ! It 
was a triumph of the Geddes system which brought 
food, equipment, supplies and ammunition right into 
the zone of actual fighting. 

This procedure was repeated in an even more 
dramatic way last November when Byng smashed 
his way behind the tanks toward Cambrai. During 
these stirring operations the light railways were 
in some instances apace with the fighting troops. 



ENGLAND'S WAR ENGINEER 279 

Without them the advance would have been im- 
possible. 

From this bill of particulars you can readily 
understand how and why Geddes made good 
in France. Six months after he established himself 
at Geddesburg he was made Inspector General of 
Transportation for all the theatres of war. This 
made him the traffic king of the British armies 
everywhere. Most men would have been content 
with this full-sized job. But England had taken 
Geddes' measure and found that it fitted all emer- 
gencies. The time had come for him to move on. 
He took the next round of the service ladder, and 
in a way that was little short of sensational. 

With the Battle of Jutland storm clouds began 
to gather over the British Admiralty. There was 
no dissatisfaction over the fitness of the Grand 
Fleet but a growing feeling that it was being kept 
under leash. The submarine devastation was get- 
ting on the nation's nerves. A strong public senti- 
ment crystallised in the shape of a demand that the 
barnacles be scraped away from the hull of the Ad- 
miralty and that the good old ship be manned with 
younger and redder blood. 

Geddes, who meanwhile had become Sir Eric, 
was put upon the bridge. He was made a mem- 
ber of the Board of the Admiralty with the rank 
of vice admiral and the title of controller, which 
went back to the time of Samuel Pepys. With 
characteristic tenacity, however, he maintained his 



280 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

post as Inspector General of Transportation, which 
carried with it the rank of major general in the 
army. Thus he maintained the integrity of his dual 
personality, because he became the only civilian in 
all history who could wear, if it were possible, a 
Major General's and a Vice Admiral's uniform at 
the same time. The wags immediately began to 
suggest that he appear in public in the trousers of 
one service and the coat^f another. 

The introduction of Geddes into the Admiralty 
was just one more proof of the urgent need of the 
business man on the war job. He knew absolutely 
nothing about battle ships, cruisers, torpedo boat 
destroyers or ship building, but he did know the 
rules of the business game and how to get things 
done. He dedicated himself to hurrying-up the 
ship-building programme and to the production of 
supplies and munitions for the navy. He became, 
as he aptly expressed it to me : "The Wet Minister 
of Munitions." As a side-line he joined the Ship- 
ping Control Committee. He was a man of many 
tasks — the Pooh Bah of British Public Service. 

The Admiralty seethed with movement. Here 
as elsewhere throughout his progressive journey 
through the principal war posts in the gift of 
Britain, he adherred to the plan of taking his own 
people with him. This is a typical Geddes perform- 
ance. The man trained in the Geddes school knows 
him and his methods. When he takes a new post 
they enable him to make it a going concern at once. 



ENGLAND'S WAR ENGINEER 281 

He was not in the Admiralty very long before he 
installed the former Secretary and Solicitor of the 
North-Eastern Railway as Assistant Secretary. 
Other old colleagues followed. The civilian had 
at last invaded the stamping ground of the sailor 
man and was there to stay. Geddes gradually built 
up a group of officials, all of them graduated from 
the railways or business and all dedicated to the 
task of making things happen. 

If you know Geddes at all you also know that he 
is not the type of man likely to remain in a subor- 
dinate place. He is just naturally booked for the 
top. When the dissatisfaction over what was con- 
sidered to be a distinct inability to solve the sub- 
marine problem expanded into a vigorous national 
belief that Sir Edward Carson as First Lord of 
the Admiralty should do something or quit the 
job no one was surprised when he got out and was 
succeeded by Sir Eric Geddes. 

The one-time section-hand on the Baltimore and 
Ohio Railroad was now in the office that made the 
supreme test of his resources. The public wanted 
action; he was the man to give it to them. Before 
he was in office two weeks he knew what every ship 
in the British Navy, from gasolene patrol-launch 
to thirty-thousand ton super-dreadnaught, was do- 
ing. As always, statistics were his weapon. He 
believes in them because they are the infallible re- 
vealers of both weakness and strength. 

He proved the efficacy of his theory when he 



282 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

made his first important speech as First Lord of the 
Admiralty. He unloaded such a fusillade of facts 
that the loudest critical guns were silenced. To 
illustrate. There had been wide-spread chagrin over 
the sinking of a flotilla of neutral vessels from 
Scandinavia convoyed by two British destroyers. 
They were surprised and sunk in the North Sea by 
German raiders. The British people very naturally 
wondered why the Grand Fleet did not hear about 
this attack and rout the raiders. 

The First Lord asked the House to recollect these 
facts: That the area of the North Sea is 140,000 
square nautical miles, that Britain herself has a 
coast line of 568 nautical miles subject to attack 
by raiders, that the area of vision for a cruiser 
squadron with its attendant destroyers at night is 
well under five square miles. Then he added : "Five 
square miles in 140,000/' There was not a chirp 
about that North Sea action when he got through. 

When you meet Sir Eric Geddes you understand 
very soon why he is one of the Over-Lords of Eng- 
land at forty-two. Physically he looks the part. He 
is deep and broad of chest, wide of shoulder; you 
can see the muscles of his arm expand under his 
sleeves. His jaw is hard and unyielding, his mouth 
is firm ; his whole being incarnates strength of body 
and determination. Despite all this bone and sinew 
he is as active as a cat. His eyes look straight 
through you. He keeps fit by riding horseback 
every morning before breakfast. 



ENGLAND'S WAR ENGINEER 283 

I once asked him what single rule had been of 
most service to him. Quick as a flash he snapped 
out: 

"The use of statistics. I statitise everything. 
Knowledge is power and statistics are the throttle 
valve of every business. But don't let statistics 
master you. Use them. I'll show you what I 
mean." 

He was sitting at the desk of the First Lord of 
the Admiralty. He pushed a buzzer and when a 
secretary appeared he said : 

"Get me the statistics." 

In a few moments three books, made like loose- 
leaf ledgers, were before him. One was brown, 
the other blue, while the third was black. He picked 
them up in succession, saying: 

"This brown book contains a catalogue of all the 
Admiralty stock ; that is, a list of every ton of stuff 
we own. This blue book is the register of the per- 
sonnel of the navy with every man's record up to 
yesterday. This black book contains the account of 
all naval operations and movements since the war 
began. Together they form a complete library of 
every available statistic about the Admiralty. In 
short I know what every man and every ship is 
doing and just where they are." 

Geddes believes that running a war is just like 
running any business. "It is just like operating a 
factory," he said. The following remark made to 



284 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Lloyd George when they first met emphasises this 
attitude : 

"Employ the men in warfare on the job in which 
they excelled in peace. Then you will have no 
square pegs in round holes. ,, 

The maxim by which he ruled his men in France 
is typical of their Chief. Summed up it was : 

"Temper justice with mercy and common sense. 
Use mercy because your people are working under 
fire; employ common sense because you must not 
expect them to do the impossible." 

The best tribute that I ever heard paid to Sir 
Eric Geddes came from a long-headed Scotchman 
who worked with him on the North-Eastern, who 
said : "Capable men always get on with Geddes. He 
attracts the best to him." 

Geddes is about the only man who ever turned 
Lloyd George down. One day when they were both 
in the Ministry of Munitions his Chief sent for 
him and demanded certain figures at once about 
shell output. 

"You cannot have them because they are not 
ready/' he said. 

"But I must have them," said the Minister. 

"There is no 'must* with incomplete statistics," 
replied Geddes. It closed the incident and Lloyd 
George had to wait. I cite this little incident to 
show that Geddes never goes off at half-cock. 

When I last talked with him I asked him to give 
me a message to the American people as I was sail- 



ENGLAND'S WAR ENGINEER 285 

ing for New York the next day. For once the 
answer did not follow hot on the question. "Give 
me a little time," he said. That night I received 
from him at my hotel the following statement, writ- 
ten in his own hand : 

"My message to your great nation is: 

"Give up hoping that this can be a short war. 
Plan and provide for an ever receding duration of 
at least two years more. 

"If we all do so, peace may one day surprise us. 
If we do not there will be no Peace and no Free- 
dom, but only a postponement. 

"There must be no postponement and no 'next 
time/ " 

In this message Geddes the man speaks out of the 
years of contact with crash and crisis. It reveals 
rare qualities of vision and statesmanship. Yet they 
were born of business. Analyse the late J. P. Mor- 
gan in the light of the Eric Geddes career and you 
realise that he might have been another Bismarck 
or Disraeli had he gone into politics. 

Geddes is of the same type. 



XII — Northcliffe — Insurgent 



ONE day toward the close of the eighties a 
boy — he had barely passed his majority- 
set up an editorial establishment in a tiny 
room off Fleet Street in London and launched a 
weekly called Answers. He wrote the first issue 
himself. Half a dozen people would have crowded 
the modest sanctum ; five hundred dollars was a for- 
tune to its youthful ruler. Yet that little room was 
the obscure outpost of the most militant newspaper 
influence that the world has ever known; the self- 
starting periodical was the first link in a chain of 
power that is to-day the Reorganiser of Govern- 
ment, the Mentor of Ministers, the Goad of Em- 
pire. It has been a dominant factor in the con- 
duct of the Great War so far as Great Britain is 
concerned. 

For the boy who dreamed of editorial power in 
that six-by-ten office became Viscount Northcliffe, 
Colossus of British Journalism. History presents 
no more astonishing or romantic spectacle than is 
afforded by this man— -now barely turned fifty — 
who has vitalised printed expression until it has 
the force and meaning of a national message. 
Delane, the famous editor of the London Times, 
was a sort of unofficial trustee of the English peo- 
ple, confidante of cabinets, inspired newsgetter. But 

286 




Photograph by Underwood & Underwood. 



THE VISCOUNT NORTHCLIFFE 
England's Unofficial War Steward 



NORTHCLIFFE— INSURGENT 287 

Northcliffe is a Premier without Portfolio. Speak- 
ing with a million tongues, he is the Watch-dog 
of Administrations, mightiest of all the Imperial 
Insurgents. 

Insurgent ! That is precisely the word for North- 
cliffe because he has defied all tradition, smashed 
all precedent. Herein lies the first secret of his 
success. In a land where the fashion of the fathers 
is the rule in thought and deed, he literally created 
a new school of mind and action. He is more 
American in outlook and performance than any of 
his contemporaries. 

We of America point with pride to sentiment 
swayed by the press; the owner of the Daily Mail 
revolutionised the British shell output, overthrew a 
Government that was believed to be impregnable, 
forced out a Prime Minister who had withstood 
three years of war ordeal. All this, too, with a 
sense of personal detachment that is in sharp con- 
trast with most of our own personally conducted 
uplift press campaigns. 

Northcliffe has done all that Greeley or Dana de- 
sired, that Pulitzer planned, that Hearst attempted. 
In a word, he is the successful composite of what 
every great American publisher or editor wanted 
to be. Whether he is a crisis-monger, merchant of 
clamour or prophet of panic and depression (as his 
enemies make him out) or whether he is the voice 
of democracy, safeguard of public liberty, cus- 
todian of the nation's welfare (as his friends and 



288 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

supporters attest) one fact is certain. He is the 
livest and most vital human entity in England; a 
man alternately praised and damned, who, by the 
vast changes that he has wrought, must be regarded 
as the Warwick of this War. If he lived in Ameri- 
ca he would be a President-Maker. 

I have seen Northcliffe in many moods; been 
with him when the earth shook with the rumble of 
guns; in the quiet of the English coast, where the 
sea beat on a lonely shore ; on the newspaper battle- 
ground of London, when he was storming the cita- 
dels of privilege and power. Each time I saw some 
new facet in his nature, found some fresh mani- 
festation of his genius. 

Although he is a person of dazzling contrasts 
there is no mystery about his make-up or his 
methods. Northcliffe has dramatised a prodigious 
personality and vivified a many-sided resource. He 
has proved that a publisher with initiative and com- 
mercial aptitude can make a group of newspapers 
not only an irresistible and country-wide force, but 
a very profitable enterprise as well. 

The career of this man — as definitely self-made 
as Rockefeller or Edison— is a revelation of or- 
ganised efficiency adapted to national service that 
is not without its significant lesson for the United 
States, young in her war travail. 

There must have been a splatter of ink at North- 
cliffe's baptism. With conventional biographical 
details we are not concerned, although it is worth 



NORTHCLIFFE— INSURGENT 289 

knowing that he was born Alfred Harmsworth; 
that he is the eldest of fourteen children; that his 
father was a brilliant barrister, and that he him- 
self narrowly escaped exile into the law; that his 
mother to-day has the peculiar distinction of being 
the only woman with four sons in Parliament — 
Northcliffe and Lord Rothermere in the House of 
Lords, and Cecil and Lester, both Radicals, by the 
way, in the House of Commons. 

Northcliffe cut his magazine teeth when he was 
sixteen, and in a way that clearly forecast his enter- 
prise. At school he started a magazine. It was 
his own particular idea. Even then — he was only 
fifteen — he had the courage and optimism which 
have been his two principal assets. In the first 
number you find the naive announcement that was 
the keynote of his career. It read: "I have it on 
the best authority that this paper is to be a marked 
success." Here is the fore-runner of the tidal wave 
of advertisement that has made the names of the 
Northcliffe newspapers household words. 

In the second number he published this: "I am 
glad to say that my prediction as to the success of 
the magazine proved correct." The boy-editor was 
the father of the coming man-magnate. Charac- 
teristic of the future controller of the Mail was the 
announcement the next month of a "Grand Extra 
Double Summer Holiday Seaside Number of the 
Magazine." 

From that moment Northcliffe literally splashed 



290 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

in publicity. The touchstone of success was his. 
At seventeen he was editing a weekly newspaper. 
Meanwhile he had toured the continent as a trav- 
elling secretary and divined then the possibilities of 
international complications of which he warned, the 
world so persistently for many years. And not the 
least of these warnings was about the menace of 
war with Germany. 

When anxious fathers come to Northclifle to- 
day and ask how their sons should commence jour- 
nalism he invariably says: "The best possible edu- 
cation, a knowledge of French and a period of initi- 
ation in a provincial newspaper office." He knows 
whereof he speaks because this, in a nutshell, was 
his own novitiate. 

His provincial apprenticeship was as editor of 
a cycling paper at Coventry. Here he learned the 
whole newspaper job from composing room to edi- 
torial. Like Ryan, Eastman and Archbold, he 
wanted to go "on his own," so in his twenty-first 
year he started Answers. Then, as now, his edi- 
torial impulse was to provide information. 

In those venturesome days Northclifle solved at 
first hand the vexatious problem of distribution. 
He personally made the round of the news-agents 
to inquire if they had sufficient copies of his publi- 
cation on hand. To-day exactly fifty thousand 
news-agents handle the sixty Northclifle magazines 
and newspapers, with their total weekly circulation 
of twenty millions, which have grown out of the 



NORTHCLIFFE— INSURGENT 291 

unpretentious weekly written with his own hand. 

At twenty-two Alfred Harms worth was a suc- 
cessful man of affairs, head of a growing business 
that was on its way to become the richest publish- 
ing enterprise in the world. Long before he turned 
thirty he had a string of nearly two score publi- 
cations ranging from Comic Cuts to the London 
Magazine. 

Just as he was about to leave his strenuous twen- 
ties, Northcliffe took his first plunge into daily 
journalism. With his brother, now Lord Rother- 
mere, he bought the Cinderella of London news- 
paperdom, the Evening News. The Conservative 
party had dumped more than two million dollars 
into it without result. It was the joke of the pro- 
fession. Wags of the Radical press amused them- 
selves by having its shares sold in bushel baskets, 
and then informing the world that they had brought 
a few cents each. Northcliffe put the unerring 
probe of his swift insight into this moribund paper, 
diagnosed its trouble as lack of continuity of policy 
and managerial control, and in less than six months 
it had the public confidence and was a success. 

Northcliffe was now rich; he was booked for a 
baronetcy; he might well be content. But his rest- 
less energy, coupled with consuming ambition, 
spurred him on to the spectacular and sensational 
creation of the Daily Mail. 

In America we have come into an era when the 
afternoon newspaper is the swift, rapid-fire dis- 



292 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

tributer of news, with a constantly increasing fol- 
lowing. In England the morning paper remains 
the heavy gun. Northcliffe had long cherished the 
idea of a morning paper, and the hour arrived 
when that dream was to be realised — and with it an 
up-rooting of the whole English press-publicity 
field. 

With the Daily Mail Northcliffe literally hurled 
a thunderbolt into the serene heaven of the British 
reading public. To understand clearly the revolu- 
tion that he wrought, you must first know that up 
to the launching of the Daily Mail, the English 
press was ponderous and pontifical, which means 
that it was dull and respectable. The editors of 
the so-called "Great Dailies'' were aloof and in- 
accessible — mostly "cave-dwellers' ' — who lived in 
antiquated seclusion. Contact with the multitude 
was a coarse and vulgar thing; intercourse with 
the staff was by letter and memorandum. Report- 
ing had become a rite; there was no stimulus or 
reward for ambition and enterprise. Papers were 
supposed to be written "by gentlemen for gentle- 
men." 

Northcliffe changed all this. But first he did a 
characteristic thing. Analyse the phenomenal suc- 
cess of the Daily Mail and you find that it was due 
primarily to preparation and the ceaseless initiative 
of the founder. It is an illuminating lesson in 
readiness. 

Northcliffe was a year getting ready. The fledg- 



NORTHCLIFFE— INSURGENT 293 

ling paper was issued daily, almost complete in every 
respect, for three months before a single copy was 
sold to the public. In these three months North- 
cliffe was scouring the world for men (he put G. W. 
Steevens on the map), appraising material, sound- 
ing tendencies, getting ready to deliver a thrust 
that, when delivered, carried conviction and knowl- 
edge. If there is one thing above all others that 
stands out in Northcliffe's life it is thoroughness. 

The Daily Mail was geared to the march of 
events and became an animate force. It "got over" 
from the start not so much by what it thought as 
by what it did. It was the first important half- 
penny morning paper in Great Britain — that price 
itself being a most radical departure. Northcliffe 
paid the highest wages and drew about him the best 
available writers. Under his regime the editor 
ceased to be a hermit, the reporter became an es- 
sential cog in the newspaper machine. He made 
things happen. 

The Daily Mail was an immediate sensation, and 
it has never got out of the habit. Its enemies said 
that Northcliffe had found journalism a profession 
and made of it a trade — that he had basely com- 
mercialised a noble calling. They quite forgot the 
fact that even the most idealistic altruism fails when 
it is not put on a box-office basis. 

Regardless of party affiliation, most of the Eng- 
lish journals denounced the intruder, predicting 
dire failure. To quote Northcliffe: "Newspaper 



294 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

warfare is very like trench warfare. Each party 
sees very little of the other. Both believe in gigan- 
tic enemy losses !" In the famous coalition against 
Northclifle, however, the casualties were all on the 
other side. He was the first publisher in England 
to have a circulation of a million for a daily. 

No phase of the development of the Daily Mail 
was more characteristic of the Northclifle policy 
than the reproduction of the London edition in 
replica every morning two hundred miles away at 
Manchester. The whole text is telegraphed each 
night over private wires to* Manchester, with the re- 
sult that the Mail is on the breakfast-table at Edin- 
burgh and Aberdeen and other remote points to 
which it is rushed by special trains, at the same mo- 
ment as the local press. The same feat on a minor 
scale is duplicated in Paris every morning, where 
the Englishman can get a Daily Mail — (Continen- 
tal Edition) — served up with his petit dejeuner. 
With this stroke Northcliffe practically wiped the 
competition of English newspapers in Paris off the 
map. 

Northcliffe papers succeed because they radiate 
the vitality of the man himself. He knows what 
the public wants. Since public taste is a fickle and 
sensitive plant, it takes real genius to keep pace with 
its moods. After his famous expose of the shell 
shortage, when his name was a hissing and a by- 
word, and when people were burning his papers in 
the streets, he knew their minds better than they 



NORTHCLIFFE— INSURGENT 295 



did. His instinct told him that they would be dis- 
satisfied with the conduct of the war, and he was 
proved right. As usual he was far ahead of the 
times. 

The world knows that he laid bare the ammuni- 
tion deficiency and attacked Kitchener's short- 
sightedness. But it does not know the way this 
historic upheaval was precipitated. I tell it because 
it reveals the very mainspring of the NorthclifTe 
journalistic machine. 

In the Times NorthclifTe had published the fact 
that the British troops in France were impotent be- 
fore the German guns because of the famine of high 
explosives. The Times had the facts and spoke 
with the authority of confirmed information. 
There was no response from Government or pub- 
lic. It takes a great deal, you know, to stir the 
British mind. So NorthclifTe proceeded to give it 
the jolt of its history. 

One morning in May, 19 15, the telephone-bell 
rang in the office of Thomas Marlowe, editor of 
the Daily Mail, at Carmelite House. "The Chief 
wants to see you," was the message that came over 
the wire. NorthclifTe is simply "Chief" to his as- 
sociates. 

Marlowe went up to the high book-lined study 
with its fish and game trophies and, for all that, its 
distinct suggestion of meditative seclusion. North- 
clifTe sat deep down in an upholstered chair, his big 
head forward, his broad shoulders squared, the pic- 



2g6 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

ture of strength. He handed Marlowe a manu- 
script, saying: "Read this." 

Marlowe read the four typewritten pages. They 
contained the now famous editorial: "The Trag- 
edy of the Shells — Kitchener's Grave Mistake." 

Marlowe looked up. "Do you realise that this 
is a terrific shock, that it will shatter an idol?" he 
asked. 

"Yes," replied Northcliffe grimly; "but isn't it 
true?" 

"Yes," was the answer. And the editorial 
blazed forth the next morning, kindling a fire of 
abuse, revolt, indignation, even ostracism. But the 
Northcliffe papers stuck to the task. 

The result was the Ministry of Munitions. 

When Northcliffe asked Marlowe the question: 
"Isn't it true?" he disclosed the one unfailing test 
that he applies to every cause or creed. Most Lon- 
don editors, however, ask, "What effect will this 
have?" or, "How will the party like it?" 

With a concrete incident I can show another rea- 
son why Northcliffe and his ramified interests have 
forged ahead. He once met a sub-editor in the 
corridor of the Daily Mail building and asked him 
how he was getting along. 

"Splendidly, thank you," was the reply. 

"How long have you been with me?" 

"Six months, my Lord." 

"What money are you getting?" 

"Seven pounds a week," 



NORTHCLIFFE— INSURGENT 297 

"Are you happy and contented ?" 

"Yes, but I have lots of leisure." 

"Then you are not the man for me. I don't 
want any member of my staff to be happy and con- 
tented on seven pounds a week." 

He himself has never been content with man or 
machine when he could get a better one. 

Northcliffe is one of the few publishers who not 
only frankly admits a mistake but profits by it. His 
experience with the Daily Mirror is typical. He has 
always believed that women have definite economic 
rights. He has not only given them the largest 
possible opportunities on his newspapers and period- 
icals, but has made one of them a director of the 
Amalgamated Press, the company which publishes 
his magazines. 

He launched the Daily Mirror as a publication 
by and for women, and it hung fire. In an article 
entitled "How I Lost Five Hundred Thousand Dol- 
lars" he made a clean breast of his failure. He 
said : "I had for many years a theory that a daily 
newspaper for women was in urgent request, and 
I started one. This belief cost me five hundred 
thousand dollars. I found out that I was beaten. 
Women do not want a daily paper of their own. 
It is another instance of failures made by mere 
man in diagnosing women's needs. Some people 
say that a woman never really knows what she 
wants. She didn't want the Daily Mirror." 

Northcliffe then converted the publication into 



298 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

an illustrated daily for men and women and it be- 
came a best-seller — one of his most valuable prop- 
erties. 

His purchase of the controlling interest in the 
Times was a brilliant coup — and likewise an episode 
in English history, for the reason that "The Thun- 
derer," as it is called, is part and parcel of British 
life. Abraham Lincoln once said that next to the 
Mississippi River the London Times was the most 
powerful thing in the world. When it was an- 
nounced that the owner of the two near-"yellow" 
papers, the Daily Mail and the Evening News, had 
acquired a controlling interest in the most staid 
and conservative of newspapers, Britain was 
shocked and grieved. The country stood aghast at 
the profanation. Here was high crime against the 
sacred traditions. 

What happened? Northcliffe not only main- 
tained the integrity of Times' dignity but made the 
paper more useful, constructive, and interesting. 

With the Times, the various British and Conti- 
nental editions of the Daily Mail, the Evening 
News, the Weekly Despatch, Northcliffe wields an 
almost incomparable influence. Through them he 
can reach every degree of English society from pro- 
letariat to prince. No wonder he has built up a 
following more permanent and powerful than that 
of any statesman. 

These battalions of print would be futile without 
a definite and driving policy. In shaping this pol- 



NORTHCLIFFE— INSURGENT 299 

icy he has impressed his two most vivid and put- 
standing qualities — courage and foresight. 

It takes an almost spartan heroism to fly in the 
face of British opinion. This NorthclifTe has done 
repeatedly. More than once — and especially in the 
Kitchener, Churchill and Asquith assaults — he de- 
fied both fate and fortune. His life has often been 
threatened. During the shell crisis he had to go 
about with a bodyguard. 

Most men who do things in a big and compre- 
hensive way fly some motto or maxim from the 
mast-head of their career. It usually sums up 
their greatest gift. In the case of NorthclifTe you 
have it embraced in a single sentence from Pascal: 

"To foresee is to rule." 

Any one can see tendencies. It is the obvious 
thing. But to see to-day what everybody will ac- 
cept and believe to be true six months or a year 
hence, is the highest expression of journalistic gen- 
ius. This is exactly what NorthclifTe has done so 
many times that his whole newspaper life is a long 
succession of predictions, at first startling and sen- 
sational, but almost invariably accepted as common- 
place in time. Let me illustrate. 

When he founded the Daily Mail he sent many 
correspondents into Germany. He began then his 
persistent preachment of the Teutonic Menace of 
the inevitableness of the great European war. He 
based his forecast on solid facts, because he was 
maintaining a Secret Service in Germany and Tur- 



300 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

key — a Service that, maintained continuously since 
that time, has provided the British Government with 
more important news than have most of its diplo- 
mats and agents. 

Take aviation. In 1906 Northcliffe saw Santos 
Dumont hop one hundred feet with an aeroplane. 
On the spot he became convinced not only that fly- 
ing was the coming sport, but that airmanship 
would be a great factor in future warfare. He 
offered a prize of fifty thousand dollars for the first 
mechanical flight from London to Manchester in 
twenty-four hours with not more than two stops. 
England thought he was insane. The offer became 
a jest and joke of press and public. Punch, for 
instance, immediately offered ten million dollars to 
any one who could fly to Mars ! 

One of Northcliffe' s staff wrote an editorial on 
Aviation, saying that while it was bound to come, it 
would be long delayed because all progress is slow. 
The next morning he received a thumping telegram 
from his chief, saying: "Stop writing such rot. 
The aeroplane will come much quicker than you 
think. Be optimistic about it." 

The first and most loyal friend that Orville and 
Wilbur Wright had in Europe was Northcliffe, and 
he aided them in every possible way. 

Take the question of paper supply. Any lay- 
man knows that paper is an all-important financial 
aspect of newspaper and periodical enterprise. The 
yearly consumption of paper by all the Northcliffe 



NORTHCLIFFE— INSURGENT 301 

interests is greater than that of any other printing 
concern. Owing to the great demand on the for- 
ests of the United States, Canada, and Scandinavia, 
a paper famine — as the present scarcity proves — 
is no impossible contingency. With his extraordi- 
nary foresight NorthclifTe realised that when the 
inevitable European conflict should come, Sweden 
would likely be friendly to the Germans and there- 
fore a negligible quantity in the paper situation. 
He therefore set about to provide his own paper. 

He chose the oldest of the British dominions, 
Newfoundland, where he secured a tract of three 
thousand square miles. Twelve years ago his pio- 
neers laid out the site of a new town on the edge of 
the wilderness, close to a great waterfall. To-day 
that giant waterfall has been harnessed, a vast 
plant has been built, paper and pulp go by private 
steamship lines to private docks and more mills at 
Gravesend, and then on to feed the hungry press. 
It is an unbroken chain that begins with the felled 
tree in the snowy wood and ends with the finished 
periodical in the hands of the reader. 

That verdant site wrested from the primeval for- 
est scarcely a decade ago is now Grand Falls, sec- 
ond city of Newfoundland in population and impor- 
tance: a flourishing community with churches, 
schools, hospitals, a hotel, bank, and a club. 

All these evidences of Northclifle's foresight pale 
before the real dramatisation of it which came with 
the Great War. In its mighty crucible he found 



3 02 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

j - ■'■ ■ ' ■■ ■ — ■■■ — ■ ■■■■■ — -■■■' ■■ ■■■ — .. . — M ■ ■■-- i . ■ 

the great opportunity which made him a world- 
figure and established him as Britain's Unofficial 
War Steward. 

It took him just three days to see what most of 
the British public did not realise, namely, that it 
would be a long war and that the country was abso- 
lutely unprepared. He saw, too, that compulsory 
service must come. With his fight for conscrip- 
tion he struck the first blow at complacent official- 
dom. As time sped on, with its record of sacri- 
fice and slaughter, he sensed the need of a com- 
plete reorganisation of British war preparation at 
home. So he let loose the full broadside of all his 
printed power, and his guns have thundered ever 
since. 

You already know what he did in the matter of 
Kitchener and the shell shortage: you have heard 
of the crisis which he brought about which ended 
the Asquith regime and installed Lloyd George as 
Prime Minister. This revolution was probably 
wrought by a group of newspapers. It ended Gov- 
ernment by compromise and delay. 

Strip away the glamour of the whole Asquith 
upheaval and you discover that it was merely a 
translation of the Northcliffe system of efficient 
team-work into terms of national administration. 
Northcliffe demanded a small, compact Cabinet that 
would get things done. 

He explained his idea to me in simple and 
graphic fashion. We were walking along the 



NORTHCLIFFE— INSURGENT 303 

Kentish coast one bleak January day. Over- 
head whirred a giant army aeroplane; far out at 
sea a grey fleet rode at anchor: from across the 
Channel came the rumble of the guns of Flanders. 
I asked him why he had fought so hard for a small 
Cabinet. He stopped suddenly and said in that 
swift, sharp way that he has : 

"Could twenty-three Lincolns have run your 
Government during the Civil War? Could twenty- 
three Grants have won it?" 

"No," I replied. 

"Well," he snapped, "there's the answer." 

Since the beginning of the war the famous coun- 
cil-room of the Times has been in reality a part of 
the British Government. "The Conference," es- 
sentially an American newspaper institution, which 
Northcliffe introduced into England, is held every 
afternoon at a quarter-to-five o'clock in a large, 
square, high-pitched chamber in the Times Build- 
ing, from the two windows of which you can see 
the huge grey and white dome of St. Paul's loom- 
ing like the Jungfrau over the Grindelwald Valley. 
Around an octagonal table sit the men who made 
the Times and who also make history. At the 
head sits Geoffrey Dawson, the editor, with North- 
cliffe in the third seat from him. It is really a 
Cabinet meeting, for often the Times gets news 
later and more valuable than does the Government 
itself. 

From this room stretches the long finger that 



3 04 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

touches the pulse of war-racked Europe. Policy 
is shaped not only for the paper, but for Britain. 
Here was planned the famous attack on Kitchener; 
here developed the small War Cabinet idea. Out 
of these conferences came a dozen epochal cam- 
paigns that changed the whole course of the Brit- 
ish conduct of the war — none more vital than the 
overthrow of the Asquith Administration. 

At these meetings, especially those held in cru- 
cial hours, you see NorthclifTe in action. It is a 
study in contrasts to watch him. He crouches in 
his chair, the intent listener, or leans forward as 
the sharp, pithy, and pointed interrogator. With 
a single question at an expert he gets at the heart 
of the whole business. 

Every great national crisis needs a practical man. 
England found him in NorthclifTe. 

It is no secret that NorthclifTe's judgment of 
men influenced the making of the new British Cab- 
inet which is charged with the task of winning the 
war. Largely due to him, it includes practical men 
of affairs. War is the hugest business in the 
world, but it is a business nevertheless. It means 
merchandising with men instead of goods. Thanks 
to NorthclifTe, you find such Ministers to-day as 
Sir Joseph Maclay, the Shipping Controller, the 
one-time captain of a tramp steamer; Lord 
Rhondda, Food Controller, who left the coal 
throne to become the czar of the stomach; Sir 
Albert Stanley, President of the Board of Trade, 



NORTHCLIFFE— INSURGENT 305 

a self-made traction king, who learned the game in 
American systems. 

Northcliffe might have had any post in the gift 
of the Government, but he has steadily refused. 
He knows that to take office would weaken his 
power. Before the Asquith reorganisation he was 
widely mentioned for Food Controller. He re- 
sented the suggestion, saying: "I could never af- 
ford to work with twenty-three men (that was the 
original number of Cabinet Ministers) who are al- 
ways late." 

Many people believe that Northcliffe is the 
power behind Lloyd George: that the Premier is 
his intimate associate. As a matter of fact, this is 
not true. Northcliffe prefers to know men by their 
work rather than by personal contact. It is part 
of his larger policy of impersonal journalism. 

Many Americans — and we are a great news- 
paper-consuming public — wonder how Northcliffe 
is able to fashion a journal into a national force 
and make and unmake governments with it, a feat 
utterly impossible in the United States. Just as 
there is no mystery about Northcliffe himself, so 
there is no magic about this performance. 

He is able to make his newspapers vital and far- 
reaching agents because, first of all, he has a co- 
herent public, speaking a common language, with 
a common heritage and ideal. We, on the other 
hand, have a huge melting pot of a nation with 
many conflicting nationalities. Northcliffe is able 



3 o6 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

to express the people's mind, to visualise it and to 
deliver his message with simplicity and reiteration. 
He once said to me: "Napoleon was right when 
he declared that the word 'repetition' was the most 
useful in the language. You cannot repeat any- 
thing too often." He keeps on hammering until 
he gets action. 

Another reason why Northcliffe can sound a note 
that is caught up throughout the Kingdom is that 
Great Britain is small. Experience shows, from 
Horace Greeley's day down, that a paper pub- 
lished in a seaport like New York cannot influence 
a whole vast continent that stretches from the At- 
lantic to the Pacific. 

This brings us naturally to the Northcliffe jour- 
nalistic creed which invites an inevitable compari- 
son with the American school. I asked him to de- 
fine his idea of newspaper control and he said: "I 
agree with the elder Bennett who said that no man 
can control a newspaper unless he sleeps on the 
premises. That is why I keep a bed at the 
Times." 

This means that Northcliffe is incessantly on the 
job. When he is not in London he is in the clos- 
est possible communication with his papers. 

He believes that the conduct of a newspaper 
should be impersonal. "When a newspaper con- 
troller knows a great many people," he says, "he 
is the object of as much wire-pulling as the Prime 
Minister. The more people you know, the greater 



NORTHCLIFFE— INSURGENT 307 

becomes the difficulty of acting impersonally. I 
see public men only at their offices. If you know 
only a few people you can strike hard at many. 
There is a great deal of truth in Charles A. Dana's 
theory that the newspaper owner must be some- 
thing of a hermit." 

Ask Northcliffe what he thinks the ideal news- 
paper should be and he will put it like this: 

"Let one man — the controller — be in final au- 
thority; give him the best experts obtainable and 
let them alone. A newspaper should be the con- 
sensus of the best brains of the best specialists — > 
the clearing-house of the quickest and most ac- 
curate news from all theatres of world event: it 
should have the judgment of daily consultation. 
Make the paper pay its way regardless of adver- 
tising, and independent of everybody. If readers 
don't like it they can burn it. If it does not suit 
advertisers, they can stay out." 

Seek the parallel with Northcliffe in the United 
States and you find the task fruitless, because no 
American publisher or editor has ever wielded such 
an authority as his. For the purpose of compari- 
son, however, the nearest approach is William Ran- 
dolph Hearst. Why has Northcliffe realised all 
that Hearst desired? 

First and foremost, Northcliffe is a born re- 
porter and Hearst is not. In the second place, one 
is well informed : he believes in a policy of "Go and 
See" (he has been to the front ten times), while 



308 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

the other is fundamentally ignorant of large af- 
fairs, and seldom takes the trouble to get first-hand 
details personally. 

The Northcliffe press is constructive, while the 
Hearst papers are organs of unrest. Northcliffe is 
a statesman with journalistic instincts who pursues 
a consistent policy; Hearst is a manufacturer of 
newspapers with a policy of drift or destruction. 

But the largest difference perhaps lies in the 
fact that Hearst has sought political office, has let 
himself be caught up in the whirlpool of bitter 
partisanship, so that when he makes an appeal it 
can only be regarded as a special plea. His influ- 
ence therefore is greatly lessened. On the other 
hand Northcliffe has never sought a public post: 
he is free to act and speak. He knows that the mo- 
ment he assumed office his power to effect large 
national reforms would cease. In all the great 
campaigns that have made him the storm-centre of 
violent controversy, he had disregarded party 
lines: it has always been a question of "Efficiency 
and Service First." 

Independence has made his Insurgency possible. 

Don't delude yourself with the idea that North- 
cliffe's masterful march is along a rosy path of 
public acclaim. No man in recent years has been 
so bitterly arraigned. He is stamped as "sensa- 
tionalist," "yellow journalist," "scandaliser of pub- 
lic and press morals." But he has thrived on his 
enemies. Fifty per cent of the hostility toward 



NORTHCLIFFE— INSURGENT 309 

him is directly due to the jealousy of his competi- 
tors: twenty-five to the prejudice born of staid 
British resentment at what is termed his violation 
of newspaper morality; while the remaining twen- 
ty-five per cent follows the wreaking of his ter- 
rible power on those that have crossed his path. 
Like E. H. Harriman, he never forgets an affront, 
never forgives a wound. He is as sensitive as a 
woman and as whimsical. 

And now for the real Northcliffe enigma. The 
man who wields the greatest unofficial power in 
Britain, who can change the conduct of the war, 
re-create a Cabinet, and make the fortune of artist 
or author with the stroke of a pen, is personally 
the least known of all the English men of mark. 
Go behind the curtain that masks him and you find 
a many-sided individual. I have seen Morgan, 
Ryan, Perkins, Harriman — all the human dyna- 
mos of the frenzied powerplant of American en- 
ergy at work. None surpasses Northcliffe in gal- 
vanic effort or in concentration. It is his first link 
with them. 

He is big of bulk, with smooth, mobile, massive, 
yet boyish face, not unlike Napoleon's, and with the 
familiar lock of hair that hangs low over his fore- 
head. His eyes, large and luminous, leap swiftly 
from grave to gay. His looks reflect his moods, 
for he is a multiple personality, as tender and yield- 
ing in repose as he is ruthless and unrelenting in 
action. Courage, capacity, imagination, are his 



310 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

heritage. He brings his friend Cecil Rhodes 
strongly to mind. Both Sons of Empire, they had 
a kinship of vision, a community of achievement. 
Rhodes thought in terms of continents: North- 
cliffe's perspective is tl^e world. 

Like every man who has achieved a career, North- 
cliff e's work takes precedence over all else. The 
only time he forgets it or is away from it is when 
he sleeps. He has a method all his own, because 
he divides the day into two scientific halves. He 
begins his labours at five o'clock in the morning 
in Summer, and at six in the Winter. From his 
bed he dictates plans and policies. Before the 
average Englishman is out of his morning tub, 
Northcliffe has done a day's work. He has read 
all his own newspapers and marked them with 
criticisms ; has outlined the programme for his eve- 
ning paper; he has talked over the telephone with 
members of his staff and picked up the thread of 
things that have happened through the night. 

Like Harriman, who had a telephone in every 
room of his house including the bathroom, North- 
cliffe is never away from some sort of swift com- 
munication with newspapers. Once I was motor- 
ing with him to one of his country places. We had 
scarcely left the lights of London behind us when 
he suddenly ordered his chauffeur to stop at the 
next post-office. 

' 'There is something I must telephone to the 
Times/' he said. It was a characteristic act. 



NORTHCLIFFE— INSURGENT 3 1 1 

At eleven o'clock, when he is in the country (and 
he does much of his work there), he knocks off, 
and plays golf until luncheon. Whenever possi- 
ble he sleeps from two until four. After that he 
sees people. The world comes to him, most often 
to that historic office at the Times, with its superb 
Georgian marble mantelpiece, its stately panelled 
walls, its high windows, through which pulses the 
roar of London. I have known him to receive a 
score of people in a single afternoon, yet so great 
is his concentration that every visitor believes that 
his business is the one absorbing topic in North- 
cliffe's mind, 

He works just as he talks and walks — swiftly 
and eagerly. Nothing ruffles him. He dictated 
his book "The Rise of the Daily Mail" in the gar- 
den at Elmwood, while a German aeroplane was 
dropping bombs in the neighbouring town of Mar- 
gate. 

There is one definite rule in Northcliffe's scheme 
of life that the overworked American millionaire 
may well heed. Save in a great national crisis, 
his work for the day ends when the time for din- 
ner begins. No guest in any of Northcliffe's houses 
will talk "shop" from that moment on. Then you 
see Northcliffe the Boy — the dynamic Peter Pan 
who will never grow up! 

I like to recall an evening at Elmwood, not the 
loveliest of his country places, but the one to which 
Jtifi is most attached by sentimental ties, because he 



312 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

bought it out of his first large earnings. There 
were only a few of us down there. After dinner 
Northcliffe said: "Let's have the phonograph." 
He stretched himself on a huge couch, puffed away 
at a great cigar of the dreadnought size that J. P. 
Morgan used to smoke, and luxuriated in Ameri- 
can rag-time that ranged from "Down in Tennes- 
see" to "Alexander's Rag-time Band." 

I started to tell him a story of Irving Berlin. 
He stopped me and said smilingly: "I have met 
him. Isn't it extraordinary that he should write 
all that music without knowing a note?" Here 
you get one of the quick and unexpected revela- 
tions of Northcliffe's amazing fund of knowledge. 
He has met nearly everybody worth knowing, and 
he never forgets. Because he gives much in- 
formation he receives much. He is the type of 
big man who always interviews the interviewer. 

When you go about the various Northcliffe busi- 
ness establishments, the first thing that strikes you 
is the youth of the men in high places. The ed- 
itor of the Times is barely forty: before the war 
called them, directors of Northcliffe's immense in- 
terests were in their early twenties. This is part 
of the Northcliffe system. He was head of a 
large business at twenty-two; he therefore knows 
the strength and resource of the young and fruit- 
ful years. The first two questions that he hurls 
at any applicant for service with him are: "How 
old are you?" and "What can you do?" 



NORTHCLIFFE— INSURGENT 313 

Being efficient himself, he detests incompe- 
tency. Sometimes you hear it said that Northcliffe 
sucks people's brains dry and flings them aside. If 
this is true they are at least well paid during the 
absorption process, for he pays the highest jour- 
nalistic wage in the world. One of his principal 
business associates gets a salary as large as that of 
the president of the United States, as much as 
Hearst pays Arthur Brisbane. "Make your em- 
ployes contented," is his rule. "Adequate compen- 
sation is the key to it. It is a good investment." 
Like most successful employers, he is deeply con- 
cerned about his people. On busy mornings when 
it is impossible for him to read all of his immense 
mail, I have heard him say: "Run through it 
quickly and see if there are any letters from my 
workpeople." They always have his eye. 

The net result is a loyal organisation and a lack 
of the "office politics" so common in many Amer- 
ican newspaper establishments. 

Whether it is the Irish in him or not, Northcliffe 
is impulsive and volatile, very human and very 
kindly. Nor is he without a keen sense of hu- 
mour. 

He wanted a taxi at the Times office. When he 
reached the street the doorman told him it was im- 
possible to get one, but that he had secured a han- 
som. 

"Where shall I go, my Lord?" asked the cabby. 

"To the nearest taxi stand," said Northcliffe. 



314 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

Like most busy and successful men, Northcliffe 
always finds time for everything. He is the per- 
sonification of punctuality. When he says he will 
come for you it means that he will be there when 
the clock is striking the hour. 

His dominant personal trait is action. He is sel- 
dom in the same place for two consecutive days. 
This does not mean that he is trying to hide, but 
oddly enough he finds relaxation in movement. In 
one week I was with him at four different estab- 
lishments, three in the country that ranged from 
what he calls a "sleeping-box" perched high on a 
lovely hill in Surrey, and the only place perhaps 
where he gets complete seclusion (he calls it "No 
Hall — Nowhere"), to Sutton Place, a noble estate 
where Henry VIII., Queen Elizabeth and Cardinal 
Wolsey often sojourned. 

No living Englishman knows or understands us 
so well. He talks to Americans in terms of Ameri- 
ca. When he wants to illustrate society, for ex- 
ample, he employs Fifth Avenue and Newport, not 
Belgrave Square and May fair; he links the Bow- 
ery with Whitechapel; Wall Street with Lombard. 
He is first-aid to the hungry oversea writers; their 
best friend at court. When the real story of how 
the British cause was brought home to the Ameri- 
can reading public is told, it will be found that 
Northcliffe's service to our writing men and women 
has aided more than nearly all .the official agencies 
.combined. 



NORTHCLIFFE— INSURGENT 3 1 5 

Northcliffe is intelligent enough not to be a strong 
believer in much of the "Hands Across the Seas" 
talk. He considers that the chief community of 
ideals between the Britisher and the American lies 
in their mutual love of fair play, their adherence 
to principles of freedom achieved in the English 
Revolution of 1640 and the American Revolution 
of 1776. 

I happened to 'be with Northcliffe during those 
stirring days when Germany launched her final pro- 
gramme of submarine f rightfulness and when we 
broke with the Kaiser. We talked much of the 
great need of preparedness in general; of our own 
lack of readiness in particular. His remarks were 
significant. 

"The United States has been an overrich cor- 
poration that invited trouble among hungry com- 
petitors," he said. "Chief among them is Germany. 
If England had had a mild military insurance there 
would have been no war. We were like you, eter- 
nally talking about money, business or territorial 
expansion. The Germans fell upon us. The curious 
fact about life is that the richer people become the 
more they preach peace. It pleases them and their 
pockets. We were all purse and no fist. 

"Your position was even worse because, much to 
the annoyance of the multitude, a certain number 
among us did insist upon a modern navy, although 
some of our richest people, as well as those most 
politically strong, advocated a reduction in the fleet. 



316 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 



"The war has shown that expert officers can soon 
train mobs into armies, provided that armies may 
come in the air and may one day come under the 
water. If, in the early days of the war, the Ger- 
mans had had the brains to land fifty thousand 
troops from aeroplane on England, and dig them- 
selves in instead of fooling with gas-bag Zeppelins 
we should have had a trouble very different to 
eradicate. 

"If we had spent as much on the right kind of 
preparedness each year as we now spend in two 
weeks of the war (our daily expenditure is thirty- 
five million dollars) this particular war could not 
have happened!" 

In June, 191 7, America was startled by the news 
that Northcliffe had landed in New York as head 
of the British War Mission to the United States. 
For obvious reasons there had been no advance 
notice of his coming. He accepted the commission, 
made ready to come and sailed in less than three 
days. It was a characteristic performance. 

I had the pleasure of making that journey with 
him. The days and nights that we walked the decks 
of the St. Paul gave me a fresh insight into his 
character ; opened up a whole new vista of his men- 
tal resource. On that trip there were many evi- 
dences of his keen interest in things and people. 
In war time the Cook's tourist is mercifully miss- 
ing from passenger lists. When you range the 
seas these days you are apt to find that your ship- 



NORTHCLIFFE— INSURGENT 3 1 7 

mates are men and women who have done things 
or who are going out to do things. They have 
definite objects. We had an extraordinarily inter- 
esting group. It included diplomats and soldiers 
coming back from the lands where we had broken 
off relations; aviators, historians, naturalists, au- 
thors and plain business men — all representing a 
varied and fascinating world experience. By the 
time we reached Sandy Hook Northcliffe knew the 
story of all their lives. More than one of my fel- 
low passengers remarked to me "I had no idea 
that Lord Northcliffe was so simple and so accessi- 
ble." 

Northcliffe arrived in America at a moment 
when his peculiar talents and experience could be 
capitalised to the greatest possible extent. He found 
New York reeking with the most torrid heat she 
had known in many summers, yet he plunged into 
his work with an energy that, considering the 
weather, was well-nigh incredible. He saw half 
a dozen Missions representing the most important 
British war activities without a head. He co-ordi- 
nated them into a mobile and effective unit that 
by reason of his vital presence and dynamic per- 
sonality dedicated themselves to a redoubled effort. 

He was not content with this. America was 
struggling with her first war problems, not the least 
of which was the creation of a vast air fleet. At 
the invitation of the American Aircraft Production 
Board he advised with our aeroplane builders; vis- 



318 THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

ited the aviation camps, talked to an army of avia- 
tors in the making, leaving everywhere the impress 
of an accurate technical knowledge gained through 
long study of this all-important subject and wide 
experience at the front. 

When the great British Recruiting Campaign 
was inaugurated in New York it was Northcliffe 
who made the principal appeal at a memorable 
meeting held at Madison Square Garden. When 
Canada launched her great Red Cross drive it was 
Northcliffe who made a special trip to Toronto 
and in a keynote speech rallied millions of dollars 
to the Great Cause. So it went. His whole Ameri- 
can trip was one manifestation of energy. He aver- 
aged one hundred miles of travel a day during the 
three months of his stay. The United States saw 
him then as he really was — an ardent patriot and a 
many-sided person who had left comfort and ease 
at home to brave the perils of a submarine-infested 
sea and to spend five months of incessant action 
amid the most uncomfortable physical conditions. 

Two important events signalised his return to 
England. One was his elevation to be a Viscount; 
the other was his remarkable letter to Lloyd George, 
declining the Air Ministry. The British Premier 
was very eager that he should accept the post upon 
which a large part of the future conduct of the 
war depends. I happen to know that this offer 
made a very strong appeal to him in view of his 
long study of the whole aviation problem. But 



NORTHCLIFFE— INSURGENT 319 

Northcliffe felt then, as he has felt all through his 
tempestuous life, that to accept an official post 
would gag his criticism of public men and public 
affairs. The post went to his no less energetic 
brother, Lord Rothermere. 

What does the future hold for Northcliffe? He 
has played such an important part in the drama 
of the war that he must inevitably loom large in 
the vast readjustment of peace. Whatever he may 
do, you may be sure of one thing: he will be the 
Statesman-Journalist, an Insurgent always. 



THE END 



